Technical data
- Original ttile: LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS
- Year: 2009
- Production: El Deseo.
- Country: España
- Direction: Pedro Almodóvar.
- Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo y Tamar Novas.
Description and synopsis
“The photo we used [for Los Abrazos Rotos] was taken by me nine years ago, on my first visit to Lanzarote. The island bewitched me. I had never seen such dramatic colours in nature. For me it was not a landscape, but a state of mind, a character. From that moment on I wanted to shoot there.”
As Pedro Almodóvar himself said in these words in the Broken Embraces publicity guide, this project began with a photograph the director took on the beach next to the Charco de los Clicos, in El Golfo, in which he unwittingly captured a couple embracing in a corner.
The La Mancha-born director, who is often also the screenwriter of his films, took this enigmatic image as his starting point to compose a drama of passions, jealousy and mystery starring one of his favourite actresses, the Oscar-winning Spanish actress Penélope Cruz, who has also won three other nominations.
Almodóvar filmed in several classic filming locations in Lanzarote (Timanfaya, La Geria, etc.). In this case, we’d like to highlight Famara, one of the island’s most superb, long, wild beaches, with almost four kilometres of sandy shoreline that receives the typical waves seen in the north of Lanzarote, and which stands at the foot of the majestic cliff of the Risco de Famara. Broken Embraces also has shots filmed in the Jameos del Agua, a fragment of a large underground volcanic tube in which the Lanzarote artist César Manrique masterfully intervened, creating a magical space of fusion between nature and architecture. Almodóvar, who met César on his first trip to Lanzarote in 1986, has always declared himself a passionate fan of the island and of Manrique himself.
