{"id":53741,"date":"2026-05-20T03:19:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53741"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:19:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:19:36","slug":"review-cannes-2026-bitter-christmas-movie-review-pedro-almodovars-engrossing-meta-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53741","title":{"rendered":"Review | Cannes 2026: Bitter Christmas movie review \u2013 Pedro Almodovar\u2019s engrossing meta drama"},"content":{"rendered":"


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3.5\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n

At 76, Pedro Almodovar is in a state of self-reflection \u2013 at least that is what you may feel after watching Bitter Christmas<\/em>, the 24th film of the Spanish director\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Receiving its international premiere in the Cannes Film Festival\u2019s main competition, Bitter Christmas<\/em> is a meta movie about the creative process, the film industry and the relationship between life and cinema.<\/p>\n

It is also terrain that Almodovar has explored before, and more successfully, in 2019\u2019s Pain and Glory<\/em>, which starred Antonio Banderas as an ageing filmmaker.<\/p>\n

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

Raul\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3.5\/5 stars At 76, Pedro Almodovar is in a state of self-reflection \u2013 at least that is what you may feel after watching Bitter Christmas,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[23064,23063,18,2568,8816,23065,5987,1543,21730,28],"class_list":["post-53741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-almodovars","tag-bitter","tag-cannes","tag-christmas","tag-drama","tag-engrossing","tag-meta","tag-movie","tag-pedro","tag-review","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}