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| Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal in Strange Way of Life by Pedro Almodóvar Photo: ©2023 Iglesias Más / El Deseo |
The latest sortie by Spanish supremo Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way Of Life, will be presented as a world premiere in the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection next month, with the director and the two lead actors Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal in attendance. Unusually it’s a short and Western shot in the south of Spain, and marks the filmmaker’s second English-language experience, after The Human Voice in 2020.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Almodóvar and the filmmaking team.
Almodóvar has revealed the plot in these words: “A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship... I must say no more so as not to give away all the surprises of the script.”
The director suggest that the strange way of life referred in the title alludes to the famous fado by Amalia Rodrigues, whose lyrics indicate that “there is no stranger existence than the one that is lived by turning your back on your own desires.”
The music is composed by Alberto Iglesias. The festival will run from 17 to 25 May.
