Is it our imagination or has there been a definite spike in recent times of high quality European films which are looking shinier, sharper and plain sexier than anything coming out of Hollywood? It seems that the new quiet knights of the cinema world; read D.O.Ps, gaffers and grips, are trending European and we're not complaining - after all we all know that Europeans in general have an eye for beauty.
Hey pronto! Enter
Broken Embraces the new film which screened at Cannes last week by that genius of Spanish film
Pedro Almodovar. Starring the ever-gorgeous
Penelope Cruz as the mistresses of Mateo, a (typically Almodovar) former-film-director-who-lost-his-eyesight-in-a-car-crash type character,
Broken Embraces is by all accounts more eye champagne than candy. Cruz, as the above photo attests is a stellar beauty with all the class of Raquel or Gina and some to spare.
Says the
Guardian's erudite Peter Bradshaw "Lena is played by
Penélope Cruz in a state of almost hyperreal gorgeousness, a sublime beauty in whose presence Almodóvar's camera goes into a kind of swooning trance, and whose exquisiteness consists at least partly in its fabricated quality; she is part of cinema's magnificent artifice." Almodovar himself is clearly pleased with it all, saying "The film noir genre is one of my favorites, the fact this film was really "black" was what was very satisfying." All three images featured here are stills from the film.
Is it our imagination or has there been a definite spike in recent times of high quality European films which are looking shinier, sharper and plain sexier than anything coming out of Hollywood? It seems that the new quiet knights of the cinema world; read D.O.Ps, gaffers and grips, are trending European and we're not complaining - after all we all know that Europeans in general have an eye for beauty.
Hey pronto! Enter Broken Embraces the new film which screened at Cannes last week by that genius of Spanish film Pedro Almodovar. Starring the ever-gorgeous Penelope Cruz as the mistresses of Mateo, a (typically Almodovar) former-film-director-who-lost-his-eyesight-in-a-car-crash type character, Broken Embraces is by all accounts more eye champagne than candy. Cruz, as the above photo attests is a stellar beauty with all the class of Raquel or Gina and some to spare.
Says the Guardian's erudite Peter Bradshaw "Lena is played by Penélope Cruz in a state of almost hyperreal gorgeousness, a sublime beauty in whose presence Almodóvar's camera goes into a kind of swooning trance, and whose exquisiteness consists at least partly in its fabricated quality; she is part of cinema's magnificent artifice." Almodovar himself is clearly pleased with it all, saying "The film noir genre is one of my favorites, the fact this film was really "black" was what was very satisfying." All three images featured here are stills from the film.
