Strange Way Of Life (2023) Dir: Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar's gay western drew a lot of attention when trailers for the short film dropped, mainly due to its all-star pair of lead actors. Although I was certainly interested, I must admit, I didn't go out of my way to see it. Instead, I waited until the opportunity arose to watch it on Mubi.

In all honesty, the worst thing about the film was by far its camerawork. Some of the shots just didn't quite work, particularly some of the close-ups. They were, perhaps ironically, too close up to their subjects. It made for some amateurish shots, test took away from the content of the film.

The film is only thirty minutes long, but it packs a fair amount of story into that runtime, most of which I enjoyed a lot. I do believe that some of the latter plot points were a little rushed, but with a limited runtime, it is admittedly hard to balance that out. Regardless, I liked the overarching narrative, especially the first half of it.

Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke were pretty solid in their respective roles, and, in my opinion at least, I thought they had fairly good chemistry. With that said, I would've liked to have seen the two men be more intimate on-screen - I think that took away from things a little bit, especially the more romantic scenes. Finally, for what it's worth, I'll say that I thought that Hawke was the stronger of the two.

Overall, I thought this was a reasonably good short film, though it was not without its pitfalls. It was well-acted, but it had some dodgy shots, and a slightly cumbersome screenplay. Either way, I enjoyed it for what it was, and found it to be an entertaining little venture into the western genre.