QUICK ON THE DRAW

PEDRO ALMODOVAR’S STRANGE WAY OF LIFE (2023) 

OCTOBER 13, 2023

Pressed for time, cowboys toustle towards elusive fulfillment in this short by master of emotion Pedro Almodovar. 

In Brokeback Mountain (2005), Ang Lee’s loving adaptation of Annie Proulx’s arresting short story, two cowboys do a lot of fighting. They do more than that, but in a heated exchange, one describes “needing somethin' I don't hardly never get.” In this humble complaint lies a burning truth familiar to every queer person at some time in their life. Be it station, or circumstances, or era, or one hundred other factors, it is not easy to get what we are looking for, and just as importantly, for it to be good. Access to fulfillment is often shrouded in darkness, and sometimes danger. And the lack of continuous, healthy fulfillment can make you as crazy as the desert sun in August. About two thirds of the countries in the world today are cool with being queer, but even in many of those – to put it like a cowboy – it ain’t really that cool.

Repression is gasoline for romance, and jet fuel for sex. Which is at play again here in Pedro Almodovar’s fun, fashion forward short film Strange Way of Life (2023). The film’s campy, old timey poster (featuring the two cowboys, side by side, drawing pistols) belies the tone here: where Brokeback went for real, Strange went Hollywood. The costumes are Saint Laurent – sorry, SAINT LAURENT – and it shows. They are great – and brand new, unworn, like the sets, and the script, with exposition brimming from every line, as two capable performers attempt to tell a full story in a sprinting 31 minutes. 

The story is told so fast, it’s hard to buy. The look is more fashion than film. The side plots are plopped in. The acting attempts two hours’ worth of fervor in a quarter of the time. (I’d love to see an alternate cut, with no side plots or additional locations; just these two men, “keeping each other company” as Pascal’s Silva says, asking each other the tough questions and defying the world outside them.)

But does any of this really matter? We have Ethan Hawke’s wisened, bristling intensity, and Pedro Pascal’s mountain of charm and moxy. Watching these two together is like seeing two vintage cars pull up slowly to the same stoplight at sunset. Handsome, strong, worthy of consideration, all the while in long underwear, perfectly folded. Where do we sign?

Hawke plays Jake, a straight-laced sheriff in a small town somewhere in the American southwest (though shot in Almodovar’s native Spain, where Sergio Leone also shot a few of his classics). His tie is tight, his hair is pulled closely back, and his resolve is steely. In comes Pascal’s Silva, broad shouldered but gentle of eyes, arriving in town for a night. They share wine, and dinner, and we soon learn their history goes back aways. But we knew that from the moment they saw each other. 

The run time is an obvious challenge, like one of those sprint races in the Olympics. More fanfare than fare. There is an overly meaty plot involving family members of both men, the call of duty, and the desires of the heart and flesh. At our theater in downtown New York, where you can order food and drink, a pair in the row behind us frantically scribbled an order as the lights went down. “Is there even time?” I thought. “Surely it’s popcorn and nothing that needs an oven.” The storytelling is rushed, the stakes overly high,but still it drew us in enough that when the credits rolled, we said in frustration –  “On no, wha?” Walking out, a companion said, “well, we did see a butt.” It may be the conservative west, but this is Almodovar after all. 

Queer stories are often set against the clock. Remember the mere 48 hours our lads had in Weekend (2011), the swift summer in Call Me By Your Name (2017) and the brief beachside tryst in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). Time is an incubator for love.  

Whether the film works or not becomes less important as we watch disparate but talented collaborators working together within a very specific theme. “Almodovar” (did “Pedro” kill someone?”)  has been showing us the raw energy and consumption of the human emotional experience since the 1970s, and his latest entry, while not fully formed enough to match the electricity of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), or the devastation of All About My Mother (1999), it deserves not a seat at the table but an accet chair in the house, let’s say. (With Saint Laurent upholstery, bien sur.) For a director who has spent so much time with women, it’s thrilling to see him try hand at the male (male) side of things, even if it is for half an hour. 

The drama is high, and the moments of bliss are quick. But isn’t that like life? Isn’t that how it feels to get something we don’t hardly never get?