Review | Cannes 2026: Bitter Christmas movie review – Pedro Almodovar’s engrossing meta drama

Receiving its international premiere in the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition, Bitter Christmas is a meta movie about the creative process, the film industry and the relationship between life and cinema.

It is also terrain that Almodovar has explored before, and more successfully, in 2019’s Pain and Glory, which starred Antonio Banderas as an ageing filmmaker.

Here, Raul (Leonardo Sbaraglia) is writing his latest script, Bitter Christmas. Initially, we see little of him; rather, it is his characters and story that we follow.

Raul’s protagonist is Elsa (Barbara Lennie), a cult director with two features to her name who is now working in commercials. She is struggling with ill health (migraines, mostly), a creative impasse and a turbulent personal life that includes her friend Patricia (Victoria Luengo, also known as Vicky Luengo), who believes her husband is having an affair.