Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar has unveiled his 24th feature, Bitter Christmas, a project he characterizes as unusually risky for his body of work. The film adapts a short story Almodóvar wrote in 2003 and published in his collection The Last Dream, concerning a director named Elsa struggling with health issues while attempting to develop a new project after years working in commercials. Actress Bárbara Lennie portrays the protagonist.
The narrative structure proves unconventional, with the story operating on multiple layers of fictional creation. A character named Raúl, portrayed by Leonardo Sbaraglia, serves as a filmmaker writing Elsa’s story, creating what Almodóvar describes as a film about a director writing a film about a director. This recursive structure demands sustained audience attention, a quality Almodóvar suggests contemporary viewers increasingly lack. The director acknowledged the formal gambit may not universally resonate, stating he took “a whole bunch of risks, even knowing that some might not land.”
The release of Bitter Christmas during summer months rather than the festive season referenced in its title represents another unconventional choice. The film includes commentary on contemporary media distribution, featuring a character’s dismissive reaction to a suggestion that a project be submitted to Netflix, with the line “Don’t reduce me to making a TV movie!” Almodóvar has maintained a consistent stance on theatrical exhibition, most notably when presiding over the Cannes Film Festival jury in 2017, where he opposed awarding recognition to films without theatrical distribution in France.
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