Pain and Glory
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 4, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
39
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinJim SlotekOct 24, 2019
In evocative and understatedly emotional scenes, carried out with a mature grace by Banderas, we come to a connection of how we get where we are, and what holds us back from what we dream of becoming. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 8, 2019
Economically and stunningly, Almodovar combines a high sense of style with a deep sense of humanity, along with a touch of erotic beauty that has always characterized his work. Read full review
100
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 7, 2019
As a portrait, Pain and Glory is less a mirror than an impressionistic painting. It’s an emotional rendering of a person, not a literal one. Read full review
100
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 7, 2019
What is involved here, in other words, is a tradition of truthtelling, with a long and honorable reach. The new film, like the old painting, is a stubborn, unvain, yet beautiful description of a man whose illusions are failing along with his mortal health, but who is somehow revived and saved by the act of describing. The glory flows from the pain. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriOct 5, 2019
Pain and Glory is at once the gentlest and most emotionally naked movie Pedro Almodóvar has ever made. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 3, 2019
A great deal happens in Pain and Glory, just not ritualistically and not at top volume. Its agonies are tempered, its regrets hushed, its restraint powerful. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 3, 2019
It’s a puzzle play, with one of the best closing shots in memory. Film is its subject. So is life. With Mr. Almodóvar behind the camera and Mr. Banderas in front of it, film and life are synonymous. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 3, 2019
A surprise in all ways except its surpassing quality, Pain and Glory reveals master Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar forging dazzling new paths while being completely himself. Read full review
100
We Got This CoveredLuke ParkerSep 12, 2019
A rebirth for both actor and director, Pain and Glory sees Banderas and Almodóvar at the peak of their electric, heart-wrenching capabilities. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellAug 22, 2019
Pain and Glory is a study of acceptance, revelation and reconciliation; it is about cinema’s relationship with the past and its power to reshape and cohere memory as a means of coming to terms with it. Read full review
100
Time OutJosep LambiesMay 28, 2019
Almodóvar fills this poignant tapestry of recollections with bold colours and infuses them with emotional detail. It’s a deeply intimate experience and it’ll pierce your heart. Read full review
100
The PlaylistBradley WarrenMay 17, 2019
A beautiful, full-hearted celebration of the craft of filmmaking. Read full review
92
TheWrapSteve PondMay 22, 2019
The film is one of the most meditative of Almodóvar’s career. ... It makes for less energetic and, yes, less exciting filmmaking. But “Pain and Glory” is a beautiful meditation on past and present, a memory piece that will nourish rather than provoke. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 18, 2019
The filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years. Read full review
91
The Film StageEd FranklMay 17, 2019
This is an especially personal work, anchored by the director’s on-off muse Antonio Banderas in perhaps his greatest performance and sweeps through the Spanish maestro’s recurrent themes: high melodrama and kitsch comedy, piety and carnal lust, sex and death, human pain and transcendent glory. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaOct 17, 2019
The characters in the film don't shed tears, but you'll be fighting them at certain points. Pain and Glory stays with you, and grows richer with reflection. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 1, 2019
The artful symmetry is an Almodovar hallmark, and his cinematic memento is filled with the intimate, indelible moments that made a life. You can feel his passion for cinema in every frame. Pain and Glory is not just his most personal film. It’s also one of his greatest. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 20, 2019
Everything about Pain and Glory is awake and alive, and Almodóvar’s nerve endings become ours, too. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 18, 2019
But if the tone is more restrained, more elegiac, and lacking that signature Almodóvar outrageousness, the emotional force still knocks you sideways. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 17, 2019
A mature work of meticulously tuned meta-fiction. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenOct 24, 2019
An abundance of color is present in Pain and Glory but the shades are more muted than Almodóvar’s early color-saturated work. Thematically and visually, this film has more in common with such Almodóvar dramas as "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her." Pain and Glory is ultimately the story of an artist on the verge of a creative breakthrough. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 7, 2019
The gorgeous, perfect final shot of Pain and Glory — I might have gasped out loud — will make you feel glad to be alive, and in a movie theater. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenOct 24, 2019
Pain and Glory is one of Almodovar’s least exuberant productions. It’s also one of his best. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshOct 11, 2019
Working with the legends of his long career to operationalize his past, Almodóvar crafts a singularly unique and medium-specific autobiography in which cinema is inextricably linked to his own story, to his heart, soul and body. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 11, 2019
Almodovar’s stylized and meta slice of self-representation is as visually stunning as it is emotionally effective. Read full review
88
ObserverRex ReedOct 4, 2019
Painful for sure, but glorious too, Pain and Glory is Spanish wunderkind Pedro Almodóvar’s best and most moving film in years—a brave and wrenching self-portrait of an aging artist under the siege of age and the fear of death. Read full review
88
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiOct 3, 2019
[A] sublime drama, sprinkled with moments of lightness. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckOct 3, 2019
Some may find the film too loosely plotted, a series of vignettes more than a single, tight narrative. But they only need to sit back, listen to the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias, and let Almodovar weave it all together _ from the first meditative shot of Banderas to the satisfying surprise of the ending shot _ as only Almodovar can. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 7, 2019
It’s a deeply personal and very moving film, anchored by the best work of Antonio Banderas’ career. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 27, 2019
In the scheme of Almodóvar’s rich catalogue, Pain is probably too small, too sad, and too obtuse to really recommend as any kind of starting point. For longtime fans, though, it’s a gift; the kind of quiet glory worth waiting a few decades for. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeAug 25, 2019
As the title suggests, the result is a tragicomic swirl of heartbreak and joy, slipping dexterously between riotous laughter and piercing sadness. At its heart is Banderas giving the performance of a lifetime in a role that, following his Cannes triumph, surely demands Oscar recognition. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerAug 19, 2019
Pain & Glory might see Almodóvar working in a minor key but it is a major work, graced with career-best work from Antonio Banderas. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 17, 2019
As ever, Almodóvar has made a film about pleasure, which is itself a pleasure: witty, intelligent and sensuous. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyOct 16, 2019
Just to remind us that he’s Almodóvar — and to make it up to us that Serrano looks so implausibly different from Cruz — the movie ends with a bravura, meta-movie flourish that’s at once dazzling and matter of fact. It’s one more example here of Almodóvar’s ability to take pairs — not just people, but concepts (like, say, present and past, or pain and glory) — and happily join them. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 10, 2019
Perhaps the bravest thing here is Banderas’ reserved performance: Selfish, hypochondriacal and sadly cocooned, his fictional film director is not a flattering portrait of an aging auteur. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 19, 2019
Pain And Glory has are some beautiful passages ... What’s missing from the movie is any real sense of danger or subversion—qualities that used to basically define this once-radical filmmaker’s work. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOct 3, 2019
Banderas’ performance is so rich, in fact (he won Best Actor at Cannes), that it creates the illusion of a narrative with real depth and texture—he keeps us invested in Salvador even as the film repeatedly declines to complicate the man’s life any further. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 24, 2019
The sentimentality — for his mother, his formative childhood, an old lover — is what interests Almodóvar, here. And while it’s great that longtime collaborators Cruz and Banderas showed up to help him walk down memory lane, it’s not the most interesting cinematic journey he’s taken us on. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineSam C. MacMay 18, 2019
Pedro Almodóvar’s latest only occasionally captures the spry, comedic rhythms and impassioned intensity of his finest work. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJan 22, 2020
The film’s pleasures and its frustrations, its energies and its enervations, are inseparable. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJonathan HollandMay 17, 2019
It’s unlikely to be remembered with any great fondness by all but Almodovar diehards, its self-regarding inwardness suggesting that he’s struggling, as his hero is here, to find something new to say. Read full review
60
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 17, 2019
The effect is a patchwork rather than an interwoven whole; the wistfully self-reflexive tone will appeal to fans of the less emphatic, more meditative end of the Almodovar spectrum. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 17, 2019
The film often rings hollow. Read full review
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