Almodóvar dazzles Cannes with his short about gay cowboys with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke

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‘Strange Way of Life’ was screened out of competition. Dozens of people were left under the rain without being able to enter the cinema, which was overcrowded. Ethan Hawke and Pedro Almodóvar arrive for the screening of ‘Strange Way of Life’ at the Cannes Film Festival 2023 Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, aged 73, enchanted the Cannes Film Festival, this Wednesday (17) , with his short film “Strange Way of Life”, presented outside the competitive exhibition. On the same day, the screening of the films competing for the Palme d’Or, the highest award at the French festival, began. This first foray into the Wild West genre by Almodóvar, lasting just 25 minutes, left his avid fans on the Croisette, where there was some confusion to access the screening room. Dozens of people were left under the rain without being able to enter the cinema, which was overcrowded. Actors Ethan Hawke, American, and Pedro Pascal, Chilean, are the protagonists of this Almodovarian experiment, filmed in English and with the air of a rehearsal, before launching into something more ambitious. In the past, the Spanish director has been tempted on several occasions in Hollywood to film in the United States. “It was my first Wild West and I did it trying not to be anachronistic,” explained Almodóvar. The short tells the story of a love reunion between two men, a sheriff and a cowboy. “It’s the discussion of two lovers who react completely differently to a night of orgy”, explained the director, among others, of “Tie Me Up”. The filmmaker has a special relationship with Cannes, where he has competed six times for the top prize. The last time happened in 2019 with his most autobiographical film, “Pain and Glory”. Despite having won several important awards, he never managed to take the Palme d’Or. ‘The secret is to rehearse’ Legendary American actor Michael Douglas, who received the Palme d’Or honorary for his career the day before, also had a special meeting with the public. Nowadays “you can’t do anything without resorting to intimacy coordinators”, admitted the protagonist of “Basic Instinct” (1992) and “Fatal Attraction” (1987). But the seasoned actor, 78, jokingly said that as an “expert in matters of sex scenes”, “rehearsal is the key”. “It’s like rehearsing a fight scene, you have to prepare a choreography. It starts very slowly and then moves to a faster pace,” he confided, eliciting laughs. ‘Monster’ and ‘Le retour’ at the pario A total of 21 films are vying for the Palme d’Or this year. The Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda presented “Monster”, a story with child protagonists, around an incident at a school. In 2018, the director won the show’s top prize with “Family Matters”. The other film shown this Wednesday was “Le retour”, by French director Catherine Corsini, who is competing for the Palme d’Or for the third time. The film, which tells the story of a mother and her two young daughters returning to the island of Corsica, which they had to leave under tragic circumstances, is also shrouded in controversy. The production was left without public funding, after it was discovered that an explicitly sexual theatrical scene, involving an actress under 16, was not reported to the authorities, as required. In addition, some collaborators criticized Corsini for the excessively harsh way of directing the filming, according to sources cited by the press. “Catherine never harassed anyone,” the film’s producer, Elisabeth Perez, assured the France Presse news agency. The French director is one of seven female filmmakers competing for the Palme d’Or, a record for the show.

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