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      Pedro Almodóvar Makes a Gay Western With Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke

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      In “Strange Way of Life,” the director’s short western, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal play a lawman and a cowboy looking back on a passionate affair.The gunslinger in green locks eyes with the sheriff.“Don’t look at me like that,” says the sheriff, squinting.“How do you want me to look at you?” replies the gunslinger, flirting.It wouldn’t be a western without a fraught standoff, but when Pedro Almodóvar is behind the camera, the glances are even more loaded than the pistols. In “Strange Way of Life,” a new short film that will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal star as a lawman and a cowboy who reunite 25 years after having a passionate affair. But will their old magic be rekindled, or are both men concealing ulterior motives for the meeting?In many ways, the project is a swerve for Almodóvar: The 73-year-old auteur, typically known for Spanish-language movies about modern women living in beautiful apartments, has cast two English-speaking actors in a short that is set in the dusty Wild West. But Almodóvar, who was courted two decades ago to direct the gay western “Brokeback Mountain” and turned it down, sees his new project on a continuum with that 2005 film, which was ultimately directed by Ang Lee, who went on to win best director.“In ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ Jake Gyllenhaal’s character says to Heath Ledger’s character that they should go away and work on a ranch,” Almodóvar said on a video call. “Heath says, ‘What would two men do in the West, working on a ranch?’ In many ways, I feel my film gives answer to that.”Pedro Almodóvar, center, working with Hawke and Pascal on set. “In many ways, I feel my film gives answer to” a scene in “Brokeback Mountain,” the director said.Iglesias M/El Deseo and Sony Pictures ClassicsAlmodóvar wrote a few pages of the centerpiece scene three years ago, then put it out of his mind. “Sometimes I just write for the pleasure of writing,” he said. “I didn’t have any purpose for it.” But inspiration struck when Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director of the fashion label Saint Laurent, mentioned that he had just produced a short film for Gaspar Noé. Almodóvar remembered the sequence with the two pistoleros, added a scene-setting prologue and a guns-out aftermath, and offered Vaccarrello the screenplay for the 31-minute “Strange Way of Life.”“Of course, it could have become a feature-length film,” he said. “But I do think it was the perfect duration for the story I want to tell.” And after making the short film “The Human Voice” in 2020 with Tilda Swinton, Almodóvar hoped to continue casting English-speaking stars. “I never wanted to do it in Spanish,” Almodóvar said. “Even though we have our own western type, the spaghetti western, I wanted to make it a classic western.”Almodóvar soon reached out to Pascal, whose star was beginning to rise with the series “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us.” The 48-year-old actor was eager to sign on; he had watched his first Almodóvar film, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988), with his family as a young teenager.“I remember it feeling like going to a new amusement park,” Pascal said in an email. “An entire world of color and play and a kind of naughty rebelión was introduced to my experience.”His co-star was just as gung-ho. “I felt really honored to be an American actor that was getting to work with him,” Hawke said by phone. “A lot of times when you’re making mainstream American movies, there’s this third entity in the room, which is you want the movie to sell — you just feel it from people behind the monitor. And what’s so wonderful about working with Almodóvar is that you feel there is nobody you need to make happy but Pedro Almodóvar.”The short went into production last summer in Almería, Spain, on the outdoor sets where Sergio Leone once shot his classic 1964-66 trilogy of spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood. “The passing of time, 50 years of it, had given authenticity to the place,” Almodóvar said. And in addition to producing the project, Vaccarello doubled as its costume designer, a crucial post on an Almodóvar film.The film was shot in Almería, Spain, on the same outdoor sets where Sergio Leone shot his Man With No Name trilogy.Iglesias M/El Deseo and Sony Pictures Classics“There’s some directors I’ve worked with who are wonderful directors, but they’re just not that interested in costume — it’s just, ‘Yeah, whatever you want to wear is fine,” Hawke said. “Whereas Almodóvar would spend weeks deciding what shade of green the wall is behind you or what color gray your jacket is and what fabric it’s made out of.”Though Almodóvar’s films are also notable for what happens when those clothes come off, “Strange Way of Life” is surprisingly discreet, fading to black when Hawke and Pascal move in for an embrace.“The sexual tension in my film happens around the gazes, so from the very beginning, I decided I wasn’t going to show the entirety of the sexual scene,” Almodóvar said. “They’re way more naked in the conversation they have after.”It’s that conversation that made Almodóvar want to shoot the film in the first place: After making “Pain and Glory” (2019), which starred Antonio Banderas as a thinly veiled version of his director, Almodóvar has found himself increasingly drawn to stories about middle-aged gay men looking back at their lives.“I do think this is partly a reflection of my own age, that I’ve decided to tell stories about older men,” Almodóvar said. “If I had written these stories when I was 25 years old, I probably would have written a story about two 25-year-old cowboys.”The shoot wasn’t easy, Hawke admitted: The production had to battle a record heat wave over 15 days in the desert, “and it’s very difficult to think about nuanced ideas when all your body wants to do is go to sleep or find some air conditioning,” he said. But as the project drew to a close, he was able to step back and take it all in.“All of a sudden I wrapped and realized that I was in the desert in Spain on an old Sergio Leone set, and Almodóvar was hugging me, thanking me, and I just thought about how much I love the movies and what a unique challenge this was and how much I keep wanting to hunt these kinds of experiences out,” Hawke said. “I felt somehow better for having done it, and I don’t know how to say it other than that.” More

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      Cannes 2023: The Films We’ve Excited About Seeing

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      Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese and Todd Haynes have works premiering this year at the festival on the French Riviera.Wes Anderson’s films have premiered at a wide variety of festivals, but after “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), “The French Dispatch” (2021) and his upcoming ensemble comedy “Asteroid City,” Cannes is the fest he keeps coming back to. Last week, I asked Anderson what he finds so compelling about a debut on the Croisette.“The reason to go to Cannes, I think, is because they said yes,” he deadpanned. “After that, there isn’t really much to contemplate.”Well, there’s a little more to it than that, Anderson admitted: For cinema lovers, there is no holier pilgrimage to make than to the Cannes Film Festival, where movies are treated with the utmost reverence and routinely given marathon standing ovations.It is a place where great auteurs have been canonized, like Martin Scorsese, who won the Palme d’Or in 1976 for “Taxi Driver” and will return this year with his new feature “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and Quentin Tarantino, a Palme winner (for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994) and Cannes habitué who’ll be back at the fest this year for a wide-ranging conversation that may touch on his upcoming final film.“I look at Cannes in relation to the other movies I know showed there, and I feel lucky enough to be included in the program that debuted those films,” Anderson said. “For me, it’s a chance to be involved in this movie history, which I love.”A scene from “Elemental.”Disney/PixarHarrison Ford in a scene from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd.A Cannes launch can be awfully expensive for a studio to bankroll, since the airfare, star entourages and five-star hotels alone all add up. Still, the return on investment can be major. Last year, “Top Gun: Maverick” launched with a fawning Tom Cruise summit and sent fighter jets flying over the south of France, while Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” threw a rock concert on the beach where drones traced Elvis Presley’s silhouette in the sky. Both films leveraged their splashy debuts to become some of the best-performing global hits of the year, and were nominated for the best-picture Oscar, to boot.This year, several star-driven films will attempt to capitalize on a Cannes bow, including “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which is being billed as Harrison Ford’s final appearance in his most iconic role. Can it overcome the tepid response to the last sequel, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and the substitution of James Mangold (“Ford v Ferrari”) for Steven Spielberg as director of the series? At least the addition of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in her most high-profile role since “Fleabag,” will add a welcome jolt to the franchise.The director Todd Haynes, who premiered “Carol” at Cannes, returns to the festival with another female-driven two-hander: “May December,” which stars Julianne Moore as a teacher whose scandalous relationship with a former student is scrutinized by a movie star (Natalie Portman) preparing to play the teacher in a film. Other star-heavy films include “The New Boy,” featuring Cate Blanchett as a nun in her first role since “Tár,” and “Firebrand,” with Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia Vikander as his last wife, Katherine Parr.And then there are “Asteroid City” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the fest’s two most anticipated premieres. The former takes place at a 1950s retreat for space-obsessed youngsters and stars Anderson staples like Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton, as well as new recruit Tom Hanks, about whom Anderson said, “I couldn’t have had a better time working with anybody.” Scorsese’s Apple-backed film charts the mysterious murders of the Osage tribe in the 1920s and will bring stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro to the red carpet.Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from “Killers of the Flower Moon.”Apple TV+Natalie Portman in a scene from “May December.”via Cannes Film Festival(Still, weep for what might have been: Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored July release “Barbie” will skip an early premiere at Cannes, depriving us of a red-carpet fantasy to trump all others.)In recent years, the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or award has often gone to a film with breakout-hit potential, like “Parasite” and “Triangle of Sadness.” The director of the latter film, Ruben Ostlund, will preside over this year’s competition jury, a group that includes Brie Larson and Paul Dano, and they’ll be picking their favorite from an auteur-heavy lineup that includes several former Palme winners.Among them are Wim Wenders, who took the Palme for “Paris, Texas” and returns with “Perfect Days,” about a Tokyo toilet cleaner, and Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose new film “Monster” is the first film he has shot in Japan since his Palme winner “Shoplifters.” No director has ever taken the Palme three times, though Ken Loach could this year, if his new working-class drama “The Old Oak” proves as acclaimed as “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and “I, Daniel Blake.”This year’s Cannes has its fair share of long films — “Occupied City,” Steve McQueen’s documentary about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, runs four hours and six minutes — but not every buzzy premiere will be feature-length. The fest will also premiere shorts directed by Pedro Almodóvar (“A Strange Way of Life”) and the late Jean-Luc Godard (“Phony Wars”), while launching “The Idol,” an already-controversial HBO series from the “Euphoria” mastermind Sam Levinson starring Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye.Eita Nagayama, right, in a scene from “Monster.”via Cannes Film FestivalA scene from “The Zone of Interest.”A24And though the festival will offer G-rated pleasures in the form of Pixar’s new film “Elemental,” it wouldn’t be Cannes without a few envelope-pushers. Keep an eye on Catherine Breillat, whose sexually explicit filmography (“Fat Girl,” “Romance”) gets a new entry with “Last Summer,” about a lawyer who falls for her teenage stepson.Then there’s the film I’m most curious about: “The Zone of Interest,” an Auschwitz-set drama from the director Jonathan Glazer. Rumor has it that Cannes passed on Glazer’s audacious “Under the Skin” back in 2013 and was eager to make up for that mistake. Since Glazer’s films (“Birth” and “Sexy Beast”) are infrequent but stunning, a new project from the director is reason enough to say yes to Cannes — and after that, there isn’t really much to contemplate. More

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      Cannes Film Festival 2023 Lineup Includes Wes Anderson and Todd Haynes Movies

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      Over 50 movies will be screened at the event, including Johnny Depp’s first major film since a defamation trial and Martin Scorsese’s latest epic.Movies by Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced during a news conference on Thursday.Also in the running for the festival’s top prize will be films by the returning winners Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Nanni Moretti.But Martin Scorsese will not compete at the festival, which opens May 16 and runs through May 27. Instead, his eagerly anticipated movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is about the murder of Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma, will appear out of competition. Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, said during Thursday’s news conference that the festival wanted “Killers of the Flower Moon” to play in competition, but Scorsese had turned him down.The Wes Anderson picture in competition is “Asteroid City,” about a space cadet convention that is interrupted by aliens; Todd Haynes will show “May December” a love story about a young man and his older employer, starring Julianne Moore.Ken Loach, whose movies focused on working-class life in Britain have twice won the Palme d’Or, will present “The Old Oak,” about Syrian refugees arriving in an economically depressed English mining town.A jury led by the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund will choose the winner. Ostlund won last year’s Palme d’Or for “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire of the international superrich; he also took the 2017 award for “The Square,” a sendup of the art world.Of the 19 titles in competition, five are directed by women, including the Cannes veterans Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwacher, and Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a French-Senegalese newcomer.Many of the highest profile titles at this year’s event will be shown out of competition. The festival will open with “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama about a poor woman who becomes a lover of King Louis XV of France. It stars Johnny Depp in his first major role since he won a defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.Other high-profile movies scheduled to premiere at Cannes’s 76th edition include “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” directed by James Mangold — the final movie in the Harrison Ford adventure series about a globe-trotting archaeology professor — and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life,” the Spanish director’s second movie in English. Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, that movie is a short western about a reunion between two hit men.Wim Wenders, the German director who won the 1984 Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas,” has two films in the official selection. In the main competition, he will show “Perfect Days,” which Frémaux said was about a janitor in Japan who drives between jobs listening to rock music. Out of competition, Wenders will show a 3-D documentary about Anselm Kiefer, one of Germany’s most revered artists.Frémaux said that over 2,000 movies were submitted for the festival, although only 52 made Thursday’s selection. Of those, one other notable title is Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City,” about Amsterdam under the Nazis. Frémaux said that McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows,” had made a “very radical” film that was several hours long. But, Frémaux added, watching it, “you won’t fall asleep.” More

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      ‘Parallel Mothers’ Review: Almodóvar’s Brutal, Beautiful World

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      The Spanish director finally confronts the legacy of his country’s political violence in his new film, starring Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit.“World-building” usually refers to how the makers of science fiction and fantasy construct their domains, populating them with imaginary creatures and allegorical meanings. But among living filmmakers, the most prodigious world builder might be Pedro Almodóvar. Plenty of directors have a style. Almodóvar conjures a cosmos — a domain of bright colors, piercing music (often by Alberto Iglesias) and swirling melodrama. If you’ve visited in the past, you will be eager to return.This isn’t to say that Almodóvaria, as I sometimes think of it, is a realm entirely apart from the drab planet where most of us live. It’s a version of Spain (most of the time), informed by that country’s aesthetic and literary traditions, a legacy that encompasses the perverse whimsy of Surrealism and the openhearted pathos of flamenco. “Parallel Mothers,” Almodóvar’s new feature, adds an element that he had previously avoided: the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the nearly 40 years of dictatorship that followed.At first, the war seems like an unlikely, poignant entry point into a uniquely Almodóvarian swirl of present-day romantic complication and domestic anguish. Janis (Penélope Cruz, never better) is a photographer shooting a very handsome forensic anthropologist for a magazine spread. His name is Arturo (Israel Elejalde), and his grim specialty is examining the remains of Franco’s victims, many of whom were buried in unmarked mass graves. One of those graves is in Janis’s hometown. Her great-grandfather was part of a group of men taken from their homes early in the war and never seen again. She asks Arturo if he can help in the investigation.He offers to do what he can, and then he and Janis sleep together. She gets pregnant — he is married — and decides to raise their child on her own. All of this happens quickly, and seems like a complicated narrative mechanism designed to introduce Janis to Ana (Milena Smit), a teenager she meets in the maternity ward. Almost simultaneously, they give birth to girls and promise to keep in touch.Their relationship will pass through friendship, love, devastating loss, deceit and despair. The central plot of “Parallel Mothers” is vintage Almodóvar: a skein of reversals, revelations, surprises and coincidences unraveled with style, wit and feeling. The contrasts of background and temperament between Janis and Ana provide the dominant tones. Janis, the child of a hippie mother (who named her after Janis Joplin), was raised by her grandmother. She has grown up to be a practical, independent Madrileña, warmhearted but unsentimental. Her best friend is an elegant magazine editor played by Rossy de Palma, a statuesque avatar of Almodóvarismo in its purest essence.Ana is the child of an (unseen) father, who lives in Granada, and a mother, Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), caught up in her acting career. In spite of Ana’s unhappy circumstances (her pregnancy is the result of rape), an aura of privilege clings to her family. Teresa, the kind of woman who might have been the heroine of an earlier Almodóvar picture — he is often drawn to theater, and to the toughness and vulnerability of actresses — is something of a villain here, an entitled narcissist who can’t fully acknowledge the reality of her daughter’s experiences.Janis doesn’t exactly replace Teresa in Ana’s life. She has her own problems to confront, some of which resemble Ana’s, some of which put them in conflict with each other. “Parallel Mothers,” in effect, critiques its own title. The two characters mirror each other in some ways, but nobody’s story moves in a straight line. Entanglement is unavoidable. Almodóvarian geometry is hyperbolic, non-Euclidean, kinked and convoluted.But Almodóvar’s art is also characterized by emotional precision and moral clarity. What happens to Ana and Janis isn’t just a matter of accident or narrative artifice; there is a political dimension to their relationship that is the key to the film’s structure.When Arturo comes back into the picture, he brings a reminder of unfinished historical business. If, at first, the horror of the past had seemed like the scaffolding for a modern story, the final sections of “Parallel Mothers” suggest the opposite. Injustice festers across generations. The failure to confront it casts a persistent, ugly shadow.That shadow is a new element in Almodóvar’s imagined universe, and it challenges some of his artistic assumptions. A reality as stark, as brutal, as unresolved as the fascist terror that dominated Spain in the middle decades of the 20th century doesn’t fit comfortably within his elegant frames and melodramatic conceits. That may be the point of “Parallel Mothers,” and the rawness of its final scenes is a measure of its accomplishment. We build new worlds to understand the one we’re in.Parallel MothersRated R. Sex, violence, tragedy. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Venice, Day 1: See the Almodóvar, Free the Nipple

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      The director was the toast of a glamorous dinner with Penélope Cruz, Isabelle Huppert and Denis Villeneuve, who talked about “Dune” as if he were a proud parent.VENICE — Denis Villeneuve, the director of “Dune,” wanted to apologize in advance.“This will be a long answer,” he said, “because of the Champagne.”We were at the Hotel Excelsior on Wednesday night for the lavish opening-night dinner of the Venice Film Festival, where the bubbly flowed freely, guests like Isabelle Huppert and Jane Campion supped on pink prawn tartare, and a wide array of major films — including “Dune,” Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” the Princess Diana drama “Spencer” and Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” — all waited to make splashy debuts on the Lido over the next week and a half.Jane Campion x Isabelle Huppert pic.twitter.com/HOsnH9qng0— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) September 1, 2021
      Though Venice was one of the few major film festivals to mount an in-person edition in 2020, this year’s program is significantly more robust. Many consider Venice to be the kickoff to awards season, an expectation goosed even further by the presence on the Venice jury of the last two auteurs to direct best-picture winners: Chloé Zhao, whose “Nomadland” premiered here last year, and the “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, the jury president.Will Villeneuve’s “Dune” be that kind of contender? The sci-fi drama, adapted from the Frank Herbert novel, has loftier aspirations and a more refined eye than most would-be blockbusters. Villeneuve (whose credits include “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049”) will debut “Dune” on Friday with a starry cast expected to show up to the premiere, including the lead Timothée Chalamet, who arrived in Venice via speedboat on Wednesday.At dinner, Villeneuve told me Venice is “the perfect way to launch the movie and it’s the first time that I’ve had time to really finish — usually, I’m finishing movies and then releasing them three days later.”Instead, the French Canadian director has had the better part of a year to tinker, as “Dune” was supposed to come out in November 2020 before a pandemic-induced delay. Now, on the verge of its Venice premiere (and with a release date rescheduled for Oct. 22), Villeneuve talked about “Dune” almost as if he were a proud, anxious parent about to send his young child off to school.“I think it has a soul,” he said. “I recognize myself in it. It’s my biggest project and still, I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Villeneuve paused. “How do I say it in English?” he wondered, before finding the words: “I just have to let it go.”Denis Villeneuve said of “Dune”: “I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockThough Venice is limiting audiences in each theater and requiring moviegoers to wear masks (and to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test), the festival still offers the most glamorous launchpad for movies since Cannes in July. Still, even in ideal circumstances (or especially because of them), it can be daunting to show your film to an expectant international crowd ready to gauge its award prospects.That goes double when you’re first in line. “You are more vulnerable if it’s the opening,” said Pedro Almodóvar, whose “Parallel Mothers” was selected as the opening-night entry of the festival. How did he feel in the hours before the premiere? Not nervous, he told me. Just a little exposed.Fortunately, reviews were strong. This intimate, precisely judged drama stars Penélope Cruz as a Madrid photographer who suspects her newborn baby was switched at birth with the child of an unwed teenage mother (Milena Smit). Though that logline is outrageous, the film is surprisingly down to earth and accessible, even as Cruz’s character is driven to increasingly desperate decisions.“I didn’t want to ask myself what I would have done in that situation until I had finished the movie,” Cruz said at dinner. “She and I are very different, but when I look back now, I feel I would have done something similar. The way Pedro wrote these imperfect mothers, it makes it impossible for you to judge them.”“Parallel Mothers” is Cruz’s seventh film with the director. “I look at him and feel like he could give his life for the film,” she said. Because of that, Cruz was determined to show the camera her most vulnerable depths as an actor: “The standard is really high and he gives me a character that is a treasure, so I don’t want to disappoint him. I try every day to give him a hundred percent.”Speaking of matters of exposure, Almodóvar was amused at the recent reaction to the poster for “Parallel Mothers,” which crops a lactating nipple as if it were the pupil in an eye shedding a single milk-tear. Upon the poster’s release last month, Instagram banned the image for nudity and then, after an online uproar, promptly unbanned it.“It’s not erotic at all!” Almodóvar protested. “You have to be very dirty to think there’s something sexual about it.”The 71-year-old director doesn’t use Instagram himself, but he knows what he’s up against. “What is very dangerous for all of us is that it’s a machine that decides to reject the poster,” he said. “It’s an algorithm, there is nobody in charge that I can talk to.”But for the time being, at least, Almodóvar has conquered the algorithm. As I left the director, other guests at the dinner swooped in to take selfies with him. You’ll never guess where they posted them. More

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      In-Person New York Film Festival Unveils Lineup

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      Opening with Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” the event will include the body horror tale “Titane” and the Harlem Renaissance adaptation “Passing.”The Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Titane,” about a serial killer with rather unorthodox sexual tastes, and the Sundance critical hit “Passing,” an adaptation of the Harlem Renaissance novel by Nella Larsen, are among the highlights of the 59th New York Film Festival, organizers announced on Tuesday.After last year’s virtual edition, screenings will be held in-person with proof of vaccination required, although there will be some outdoor and virtual events. (More details on pandemic protocols will be released in the coming weeks.)As previously announced, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Joel Coen’s solo directing debut, will play opening night, Sept. 24. A take on the play by Shakespeare, it stars Denzel Washington in the title role and Frances McDormand, the director’s wife, as Lady Macbeth. The centerpiece of the festival will be “The Power of the Dog,” the first Jane Campion film in more than a decade, and “Parallel Mothers,” from Pedro Almodóvar, will be the closing-night title.The main slate will feature a mix of premieres and highlights from earlier festivals. The body horror tale “Titane” made headlines last month when its director, Julia Ducournau, became only the second woman (after Campion in 1993) to win Cannes’ top prize. Other titles from the French festival heading to New York include “Benedetta,” Paul Verhoeven’s 17th-century lesbian nun potboiler; “The Souvenir Part II,” Joanna Hogg’s follow-up to her 2019 semi-autobiographical drama about a film student in 1980s London; and “The Velvet Underground,” Todd Haynes’s documentary about the band synonymous with Andy Warhol’s New York.From Sundance, “Passing,” directed by the actress Rebecca Hall, who adapted Larsen’s 1929 novel, stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as childhood friends who reconnect from opposite sides of the color line. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated “Flee,” which won the Sundance world cinema documentary prize, focuses on a gay Afghan refugee in Denmark.Other titles of note include Mia Hansen-Love’s “Bergman Island,” starring Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth; the comic-drama “Hit the Road,” from Panah Panahi, son of the Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi; and two films from the Korean director Hong Sangsoo, “In Front of Your Face” and “Introduction.”Passes are on sale now; tickets to individual films will go on sale Sept. 7. Go to filmlinc.org for more details. More

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      ‘The Human Voice’ Review: Almodóvar Meets Cocteau Meets Swinton

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      The first English-language film from the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar stars Tilda Swinton and adapts Jean Cocteau to sublime results.A woman is brought to the end of her rope by a recalcitrant former lover. In what could be their last exchange, she speaks to the man over the phone. She cajoles, she feigns composure, she sneers, she renounces — things get kind of crazy.Sounds like a Pedro Almodóvar movie. It was, and it is again. It’s a little complicated.This movie, a mere 30 minutes in length but as fully fleshed out as almost any feature by the dazzling Spanish filmmaker, is an adaptation of the venerable 1930 monodrama “La Voix Humaine,” a magnificent actress’s aria by Jean Cocteau. Back in 1988, Almodóvar borrowed its narrative elements for his film “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” which helped the director advance into the mainstream. Previously, he’d been a near-underground cult figure.Almodóvar had been planning to make an English-language film for some time, and now he’s done it, working with the British actress Tilda Swinton. Does this sound like a match made in heaven? Yeah, it pretty much is. Almodóvar’s sense of cinema design — the décor simulates a luxe apartment and lays it bare as a soundstage illusion — is acutely keyed to Swinton’s performance here, which projects mercurial emotion with Swiss watch precision.The credits specify that this is a “free” adaptation of the Cocteau work. One factor of that freedom is that the monologue doesn’t begin until about 10 minutes in — unlike Cocteau’s work. But Almodóvar’s own poetic spirit meshes nicely with that of the old master’s throughout. Hardly surprising.The Human VoiceRated R for language. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 30 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More