DVD review: Broken Embraces

This is Penélope Cruz's fourth film with Pedro Almódovar and, as usual, any few frames would tell you who the director is. The bright colours, soap-operatic melodrama and unpredictable plotting are all in place. Although this is a rather ragged construct, it also includes the director's calling cards, disability and a coma. The action starts with a blind writer, "Harry Caine" and it's up to the flashbacks to show how he ended up this way, after being a film director. It's full of movie allusions, to Buñuel, Hitchcock and Truffaut as well as the Madrid maestro's previous. He's a great storyteller, piles on the incident and always makes you want to know what happens next. Cruz is in top form and it's good to see Angela Molina, of That Obscure ­Object of Desire fame, in a small, but vivid part as her mother. A few ­mysteries (why would a blind man wear a watch?) seem unintentional; plenty more unravel satisfactorily.