‘Strange Way of Life’ Review: Almodóvar Reflects on ‘Brokeback Mountain’ with His Queer Western

During a crucial scene in Strange way of life, Pedro PascalOutlaw Silva reminds Ethan Hawke’s Sheriff Jake of a conversation they had 25 years ago: “Years ago you asked me what two men could do if they lived on a ranch together,” Silva whispers. This is both the core of the story of Pedro Almodóvar’s queer Western short film – a tale of former lovers reuniting and reminiscing on the eve of inevitable conflict – and the film’s raison d’être.

A little over two decades ago, Almodóvar had the opportunity to direct Brokeback Mountain – the iconic, tragic drama about two ranchers in love, ultimately directed by Ang Lee. But the Spanish maestro rejected the project, quote fears that Hollywood won’t give him the freedom he needs to capture two men enraptured by love and “animalistic” lust. His 30-minute cinematic response, in theaters October 4, doesn’t quite reach the emotional heights of Lee’s Oscar-winning milestone or his own filmography. You often seem to be torn between a hastily shortened feature and an overly long concept short. But despite its unpolished structure and plodding dialogue that attempts to fill dramatic gaps, Almodóvar’s passion for the project comes through fully, as does the aforementioned carnality he once hoped to convey broke.

What really sells the film – as a standalone drama and a metatextual story of regret – is Hawke’s thoughtful, layered performance. His portrayal of Jake proves once again that he is the rare American actor whose career touches on the Hollywood mainstream, but who also feels he belongs to the world of upscale art house cinema several oceans away. In Strange way of life, A Spanish production in the guise of a classic western, it has received the stylistic balance it deserves. This may well be a career-defining achievement, even if the film in question is riddled with imperfections.

Almodóvar gets in the mood for his cowboy romance.

It’s hard to avoid the feeling Strange way of life leaves much of its story untold. It introduces us to Jake just as he begins to investigate a murder that occurs off-screen. Here the lone rider Silva invades his small town in the hope of having a drink with him. Stilted spoken exchanges fill in the gaps in who and why, awkwardly revealing both men’s connection to the case, but these details quickly (if inelegantly) build emotional walls between them. Despite facing each other for the first time in decades, they hardly see eye to eye. Soon the film’s quiet moments take over and allow the performance to temporarily fade into the background.

With emotional efficiency, Almodóvar spins an entire world around Jake and Silva, even if the film is limited to a handful of rooms. The frame gets stuck on details and objects. Jake’s bed, his drawer of underwear that Silva inspects curiously, an old handkerchief of Silva’s that Jake kept as a souvenir, are introduced both through single shots that highlight their vital importance to the former couple and through fleeting dialogue that follows them indicates why this relationship must remain behind closed doors.

However, Strange way of life does not insist on the illicit nature of Jake and Silva’s romance. That they must remain hidden in the Wild West is simply a tragic fact – a concrete, unchanging background that creates new complications for the duo as they find themselves on opposite sides of the law. The objects that Jake and Silva look at longingly become physical reminders of the intangible, of a love that may have once been true but can never be entirely real.

Ethan Hawke surpasses Pedro Pascal Strange way of life.

Strange way of life has no concerns that the Wild West is a wild realm full of outlaws. Therefore, the physical softness that Jake and Silva share feels like a precious jewel peeking out from the harsh and unforgiving desert sands. Although their confrontations are detailed, both men reveal longing and a sense of unspoken regret through their silence—not only when their eyes meet, but also when they quickly look away, as if dancing around the specifics of their past is the only way to do so would be to keep her long-buried heartbreak at bay.

At just 30 minutes long, the short never has time to show us what it looks like when all that pain comes out, except for a few moments where Hawke tries to bury it but momentarily loses control . Almodóvar’s melodrama – with his typical telenovela device – builds up here but never fully explodes. Yet Hawke spends all of his screen time approaching this point of unbridled anger and guilt, and allows it to guide both Jake’s actions and his inactions. His voice grows hoarser and more painful, as if Silva’s mere presence as a walking reminder of the past was too much for him to bear. Hawke’s work is breathtaking to behold.

Pascal is by no means a supporting player, but unfortunately Silva does the lion’s share of the “Hey, remember that time…” dialogue while Jake does virtually all of the recall. Unfortunately, Silva’s motivations are only made clear after the fact, so it can be difficult to understand him the first time around. However, on a return visit Strange way of life A second time, it reveals levels of Pascal’s achievement that might be unclear upon first viewing. It’s a film that, due to its limited running time, obscures much of its drama before scattering them haphazardly across the floor like stray LEGO bricks. But once Pascal begins to pick up the pieces, the film’s emotional mysteries begin to take hold.

Despite the shortened length, Hawke and Pascal weave an entire story through their interactions, hesitant body language, and brief but passionate physical rendezvous. Almodóvar and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine’s camera unabashedly captures them as old men trying to live out both the violent and romantic fantasies of youth. Close-ups of heavy eyes speak of life lived, and the wrinkles around them suggest laughter – both together and apart. However, what helps solidify this idea is a look into the past in a quick flashback that further encapsulates this theme and allows it to be truly felt and not just spoken out.

Strange way of life idealizes the past in a haunting way.

While Hawke and Pascal play broken men plagued by regret, Jake and Silva play the roles of Jason Fernández and José Condessa in a supporting scene decades ago. These are young, beautiful men who feel like they belong on a contemporary runway rather than a Western – a fitting accompaniment since the short was co-financed by fashion house Saint Laurent – although the exuberant glow of this flashback is more than just eye candy.

The scene, which features the two men, a trio of women, and pistols and wine, is full of the kind of unbridled sexual passion that Almodóvar spoke of when justifying his decision to leave Brokeback Mountain. It’s less explicit than Lee’s later film, but arguably more passionate and stirring. It’s practically bacchanalian, breathing life into Jake and Silva’s past in a way that their words don’t seem to do in the present.

While this discrepancy between the way words and images paint a picture of the past occasionally robs the film of its power – the flashback takes up only a fraction of the half-hour running time – this dynamic speaks to the dissonance between Jake and Silva’s see their past selves and their heartaches and the people they have become now. Strange way of life is by no means in the same league as Almodovars Pain and glory, which treads similar territory in terms of regret, but with much more poetry and emotional weight. Jake and Silva’s words, on the other hand, are clunky, grasping for meaning that never fully fits together. But the images depicting that past are flawless, which makes their current situation all the more melancholy.

In fact, the film’s visual language takes us in and out of these flashbacks using close-ups of both men, as if we were witnessing not the subjective memory of both characters, but a shared fantasy. Here is a display of emotions and physical sensations that they may never be able to capture again. It is not the memory of a single person, but the memory of the film itself, which brings to mind echoes of what Almodovar would have imagined years ago if he had made it Brokeback Mountain in 2005. This peculiar editing approach presents these images as idealizations of a film that never was and never could be. They now exist only as the fantasies of an older and wiser man — a man who may live with artistic regret, even if the film doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to fully explore that instinct.

Strange way of life The running time and overall scope may be small, but there are undeniably powerful moments to be found thanks to its daring performances and its look at a likely imperfect past, portrayed with a sense of impossible perfection. It’s the kind of lush filmmaking that Almodóvar excels at and that makes his brief foray into the West so watchable and enticing.

Strange way of life is now streaming on Netflix.

UPDATE: April 12, 2024, 9:00 a.m. EDT Strange Way of Life was reviewed at the New York Film Festival. This review was repeated for the Netflix debut.