'Broken Embraces': Pedro Almodóvar's grip on movies — and love — is still strong

"I live there," says an actress, nodding toward her character's apartment while rushing a visitor through the set of her movie. It's a throwaway line, but it gets at something at the heart of Pedro Almodóvar's "Broken Embraces": the way life and movies intertwine, and the way what's captured by a camera can seem as real as what happens on its other side.

Told in a back-and-forth way that suggests rewinding, "Broken Embraces" is a tale of lost love: Mateo (Lluís Homar) is a former film director, now blind as a result of an accident 14 years ago. Assisted by his former production manager Judit (the wonderfully sharp-eyed Blanca Portillo) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas), he lives a quiet life writing screenplays under the very movie-ish name of Harry Caine. One night, he begins to tell Diego a story of his past: of his great love, Lena (Penélope Cruz), a beautiful secretary-turned- mistress-turned-actress who wears vivid red and gazes at the camera as if it's her beloved.

A noirish story gradually unfolds, of jealousy (involving Lena's wealthy lover, who is suspicious of her new career), of spying, of forbidden love and dramatic consequences. And while the story doesn't have the emotional impact of some finer Almodóvar works (the wonderful "Volver" or "Talk to Her"), and explores territory the Spanish master has covered before (the equally cinema-obsessed "Bad Education"), "Broken Embraces" is a stylish and often moving drama, creatively told and thoughtfully performed. And it's embellished by splashes of humor, like the red Almodóvar spatters throughout the film as a theme color: Mateo and Diego happily plan a vampire movie, set in a blood bank and involving the phrase "dental erection."

All of the actors do good work, but as is often the case in Almodóvar films, the women own the movie. Portillo (who also joined Cruz for "Volver") movingly conveys that her character loves Mateo, without ever saying so; her sharpness hides something soft that she's afraid to reveal. And Cruz, so lovely she hardly seems real, makes Lena both vulnerable and steely. Lena's life, it seems, is turning into a movie that she can't escape, as men and cameras seem to blur together and her dazzling smile becomes little defense. The last we see of her, fittingly, is on film; she's lost, yet forever found.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com