Los Abrazos Roto *****
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 129min, Spanish with French subtitles, ESA Cineclub, Apr 5, 8.30pm

While some of Almodóvar’s films are out-and-out heartbreakers – perfect storms of melodrama, storytelling and extreme living – this is a more cerebral, self-reflective and noir-ish affair.

We start in the present: Harry Caine is a blind scriptwriter who doesn’t let his disability disarm him: we encounter him having fun on his sofa with a woman who helped him to cross the road. But his past rears its head when a young man comes knocking and we flash back to 1992 to meet Lena, a young secretary driven to desperate measures to help her ill father. Two years later, Lena is living with her violent, older millionaire boss Ernesto Martel and starring in a film funded by Martel and directed by Caine – not yet blind and using his real name, Mateo Blanco.

To explain more is unnecessary, but Almodóvar explores themes of spying and control, each of which he reflects through cinema itself. You have to be prepared to think more than you feel, and to think more about cinema even than life itself. But what brilliant thoughts...

Dave Calhoun.