Coming six times to Cannes in competition, Pedro Almodovar has always left the Croisette empty-handed and has never won the supreme award, namely the Palme d’Or. He settled for the directing award for All About My Mother in 1999 and the screenplay award for Volver in 2006. A Scandal.

Presented out of competition at the last Cannes Film Festival in an atmosphere close to a riot – the hall of the Grand Palais was stormed – Strange Way of Life (2023), Almodovar’s queer western, finally hits the cinema this Wednesday . And that’s good news.

This 31-minute medium-length film, with dialogue in English, is a melodrama that stars American comedian Ethan Hawke and another Pedro, the Chilean-American Pedro Pascal, who became famous thanks to the series Narcos, The Mandalorian and The Last of Us. .

Symbol of the Madrid Movida in the early 1980s – this exuberant cultural movement that arose after the death of General Franco – Almodovar produced unbridled and extravagant works, kitsch and colorful, pop and colorful, which made him the star of Iberian cinema. – the successes of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Attach Me, Stilettos.

He has calmed down a bit in recent years and has reached a kind of maturity. His cinema, more peaceful, became moving from the sublime All about my mother (1999) and Parle avec elle (2002). The director, who will celebrate his 74th birthday in September, is now reaching the fullness of his art and is now filming melancholic and aging heroes. Mature men who talk about their desires, love each other and tear each other apart. Like the protagonists of Strange Way of Life.

If he had already shown excerpts from Duel au soleil (1946) and Johnny Guitare (1954) in his old films, Pedro had never rubbed shoulders with the western genre before. The action of his medium-length film takes place in 1910. Silva (Pedro Pascal), a cowboy of Mexican origin, crosses the desert on horseback to find Jake (Ethan Hawke), whom he knew well when they were both contract killers. Silva wants to reconnect with his childhood friend, whom he has not seen for twenty-five years.

Now sheriff in Bitter Creek, Jake must go in search of an assassin who killed his sister-in-law and who, according to a witness, is none other than Silva’s son. The latter, come to intercede on his behalf, tries to convince Jake of the innocence of his offspring so that he abandons his pursuit. Hence the Cornelian dilemma of this melodrama.

We understand very quickly that Jake and Silva had an affair during their youth. That they loved each other madly in the past. These two rode together. And time has erased nothing of their devouring passion. In the film, after a torrid night of love, each confides in the other. Torn between reason and feelings, will the sheriff do his duty and bring justice, by having the son of the one he loves tried and hanged? Or can the two lovers live together on a ranch and watch over each other? It’s the law of desire – title of a 1987 film by Pedro – against the law of the West…

Filmed in a village in the province of Almeria, southern Spain, which was once the setting for Sergio Leone’s famous “dollar trilogy” with Clint Eastwood, Strange Way of Life offers splendid landscapes in CinemaScope. As beautiful as it is sad, the film plays the card of melancholy, aided by a superb musical score by Alberto Iglesias. The two actors, magnificent, bring a lot of emotion to this project, despite the narrative constraints of the short format.

An eminently virile genre, where male friendships hold an important place, the western has always been gay-friendly. For example, in The Red River (1948) by Howard Hawks, two young cowboys (Montgomery Clift and John Ireland) compare their respective weapons (read: who has the bigger one?). Anthony Quinn’s troubled relationship with Henry Fonda in Edward Dmytryck’s The Man with the Golden Colts was encrypted in 1959.

Recently, Jane Campion also addressed the issue of homosexuality in Montana in 1925 with the fabulous The Power of the Dog (2021), broadcast on Netflix. In short, the western has always been a little gay on the edges, as the disco music group Village People had already understood (with its cowboy and its Indian!) who sang, as early as 1979, the hit “Go West” .

If lately, great filmmakers have gone to seek funding for their films on streaming platforms – such as Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, David Fincher or Alfonso Cuaron – others are turning to the big brands and the industry. luxury – Wes Anderson shot, for example, in 2013, a short film produced by Prada, Castello Cavalcanti.

This is the case today with Almodovar, who was able to finance Strange Way of Life thanks to the support of Saint Laurent. Indeed, the YSL brand has been involved in film production for some time and offers filmmakers total artistic freedom.

The Belgian stylist Anthony Vaccarello, artistic director of the fashion house Saint Laurent, was also responsible for the sumptuous costumes of the film. Saint Laurent Productions has also worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Bret Easton Ellis, Gaspar Noé – for the 52-minute Lux Æterna –, Abel Ferrara, Paolo Sorrentino, Wong Kar-wai, Jim Jarmusch and is currently preparing a feature film with David Cronenberg.

Sure, Strange Way of Life only lasts 31 minutes. But there is more freedom and creativity in this half-hour than in the bulk of current production, whose poverty of inspiration – especially visual – never ceases to amaze. The short form has never been a hindrance for Almodovar. Three years ago, he had already signed a formidable 30-minute short film, presented in world premiere at the Venice Film Festival: La Voix humaine (2020), freely adapted from Jean Cocteau, which told the torments of a woman (Tilda Swinton) abandoned by her lover.

This film will also be presented in cinemas as a double program with Strange Way of Life. In fact, the only reproach that one could address to the western of Pedro Almodovar, it is its brevity. Strange Way of Life would have deserved a longer duration and we regret having to leave these romantic and endearing cowboys so quickly.

With an excellent script and a clever ending, this film is a purely artistic gesture. A beautiful romance with heightened feelings, which takes as its theme the resurgence in the present of an ancient passion – a subject already treated in Almodovar’s most personal, autobiographical and introspective work: Pain and Glory (2019).

A self-portrait in which a filmmaker in the midst of an existential crisis – played by his alter ego Antonio Banderas – reunites with an old lover after a thirty-two-year estrangement and experiences a burning new passion with him. So if you like the inventiveness of Almodovar’s cinema, run to see the medium-length film of our favorite drama queen. His imagination is precious.

Strange Way of Life, by Pedro Almodovar (Spain, 31 minutes), Pathé distribution, with Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal, Manu Ríos, Jason Fernandez, Sara Salamo, Pedro Casablanc. Released August 16.