A gunman in green clothes meets the sheriff’s eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” the sheriff squints.
“How do you want me to look at you?” the gunman replies, flirting.
It wouldn’t be a western without a sharp confrontation, but when Pedro Almodovar is behind the camera, his gaze carries more weight than a pistol. of “strange way of lifeis a new short film that will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, in which Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal play a lawyer and a cowboy who reunite after 25 years after a passionate affair. But will their old magic flare up again, or are both men hiding their ulterior motives for the meeting?
In many ways, the project is a turning point for Almodóvar. The 73-year-old author, best known for his Spanish-language films about modern women living in beautiful apartments, has cast two English-speaking actors for a short film set in Spain. The dusty wild west. However, Almodovar, who was asked to direct the gay Western “Brokeback Mountain” 20 years ago and turned it down, believes that his new project will be a continuation of the same work in 2005. was directed by Ang Lee, who ultimately won Best Director. .
“In ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ Jake Gyllenhaal’s character is telling Heath Ledger’s character that he should go somewhere and work on a ranch,” Almodóvar said in a video call. “Heath says, ‘What would two ranch men do in the West?’ In many ways, I feel my film provides the answer.”
Almodovar wrote a few pages of the featured scene three years ago, then erased it from his mind. “Sometimes I just write for the fun of writing,” he said. But he was inspired by fashion label Saint Laurent creative when his director, Anthony Vaccarello, told Gasper that he had just made a short film for Noé. springs up. Almodovar remembered the scene with the two pistoleros, added a setting prologue and aftermath of the shooting, and offered Vaccarello a 31-minute script for The Strange Way of Life.
“Of course it could have been a feature film,” he says. “But I think it was the perfect period for the story I wanted to tell.” “Human Voice” Almodóvar, who co-starred with Tilda Swinton in 2020, still wanted to cast an English-speaking star. “He didn’t want to do it in Spanish,” Almodovar said. “We have our own type of western, a spaghetti western, but I wanted it to be a classic western.”
Almodóvar soon reached out to Pascal, who was beginning to rise to stardom with the series. “Mandalorian” and “Last of Us” The 48-year-old actor was enthusiastic about performing. When he was still a teenager, he and his family saw Almodóvar’s first film Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988).
“I remember feeling like I was in a new amusement park,” Pascal said in an email. “A whole world of color and play and a kind of naughty rebellion entered my experience.”
His co-star was just gung-ho. “It was a real honor to work with him as an American actor,” Hawke said by phone. “A lot of the time when you’re making a mainstream American movie, there’s a third person in the room who wants to sell the movie, and that can only be felt by the people behind the monitors. What’s so wonderful about working is that you feel like you have no one to make happy but Pedro Almodovar.”
The short began production last summer in Almeria, Spain, on an outdoor set where Sergio Leone once shot a movie. The classic 1964-66 trilogy Spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood. “The passage of time, 50 years, has given this place a sense of authenticity,” said Almodovar. In addition to producing the project, Vaccarello also served as costume designer, an important post for Almodóvar films.
“Some of the directors I’ve worked with have been great, but they’re not really into costumes. They just say, ‘Yeah, you can wear whatever you want.’ said Hawk. “Almodovar, on the other hand, spent weeks deciding what color of green the back wall was, what color of gray the jacket was and what fabric it was made of.”
Almodóvar’s film is also notable for what happens when the clothes come off, but “Strange Life” is surprisingly understated, fading to black as Hawk and Pascal approach an embrace.
“From the beginning, I decided not to show all the sexual scenes, because the sexual tension in my film revolves around the gaze,” Almodóvar said. “In subsequent conversations, they’re even more naked.”
It was that conversation that made Almodovar want to make the film in the first place. After making Pain and Glory (2019), which starred Antonio Banderas in a veiled version directed by him, Almodovar said he became more and more drawn to middle-age stories. -Older gay men reflecting on their lives.
“I think it’s part of the reflection of my own age that I decided to tell stories about older men,” Almodóvar said. “If I had written these stories when he was 25, perhaps he would have written a story about his two cowboys at 25.”
Hawke admitted that filming was not easy. “The production had to contend with 15 days of record heatwaves in the desert, and it’s very difficult to think of subtle ideas when your body just wants to sleep or find something. “Air conditioning,” he said. But as the project drew to a close, he was able to take a step back and embrace it all.
“Suddenly I was on an old Sergio Leone set in the Spanish desert and Almodovar hugged me and thanked me. And I just realized how much I love the movie.” and what a unique challenge this is,” Hawk said. “It made me feel better somehow. I don’t know what else to say.”
