Strange Way of Life (Pedro Almodóvar, 2023) (Patreon)

Now this is weird. For the first time that I can remember, a film under 65 minutes is receiving a standard commercial release. And Strange Way of Life is significantly shorter, clocking in at 32 minutes, at least three of which are end credits. I guess you can never underestimate the power of a millionaire director with offshore shell companies, or the mini-major distributor (Sony Classics) that does his bidding.

Circumstances of its release aside, Strange Way of Life is indeed a weird film, even though on a minute to minute basis it seems conventional and even derivative. A gay Western driven by double-barreled star power -- Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal -- everything about this film feels rushed. I don't mean that Almodóvar cut corners or produced substandard work. Even though some of its High Noonish flourishes felt a little campy -- the windmill anchoring the right side of the frame at Silva's (Pascal) place was almost Sirkian -- there is plenty here that could have been shaped into a reasonably satisfying if minor Almodóvar film.

But nothing in Strange Way has time to breathe. From the intra-scene editing to the movement from sequence to sequence, this felt very much like a feature film on fast-forward. Because nothing has time to develop, virtually every aspect of Strange Way registers only in the most iconic shorthand. Why do we care about Silva and Jake (Hawke)? What was their relationship like? Even the flashback doesn't really tell us. Maybe this is purposeful, since their reunion tryst, like the film as a whole, was a quickie, something that hinted at a future but had to be quickly brushed aside. 

Thing is, Strange Way of Life might have even blossomed into something romantic and rueful if it had just 90 minutes to develop its characters, its relationships, its physical space. I'm not sure we really want Saint Laurent in the film business.