Culver City, CA (February 1, 2010) –Academy Award® winning writer and director Pedro Almodóvar (2000 Best Foreign Language Film All About My Mother, 2003 Best Original Screenplay Talk to Her) reunites with Academy Award® winner Penélope Cruz (2009 Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Volver) for Broken Embraces, the story of a man who takes on a new identity in an attempt to forget his tragic past. This Sony Pictures Classics film was nominated for a Golden Globe® as Best Foreign Language Film and was an official selection of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Broken Embraces will be available from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on March 16, 2010 for an SLP of $34.95 for Blu-ray and $28.96 for DVD. Special features on both versions will include deleted scenes, two Featurettes, Q&A with Penélope Cruz and an original short film by Almodóvar.
Synopsis
A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life.
The man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts; and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the films he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. If he can’t direct films, he can only survive with the idea that Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena.
In the present day, Harry Caine lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets from his faithful former production manager, Judit Garcia, and from Diego, her son, his secretary, typist and guide.
Since he decided to live and tell stories, Harry is an active, attractive blind man who has developed all his other senses in order to enjoy life, on a basis of irony and self-induced amnesia. He has erased from his biography any trace of his first identity, Mateo Blanco. One night, Diego has an accident and Harry takes care of him (his mother, Judit, is out of Madrid and they decide not to tell her anything so as not to alarm her). During the first nights of his convalescence, Diego asks him about the time when he answered to the name of Mateo Blanco. After a moment of astonishment, Harry can’t refuse and he tells Diego what happened fourteen years before with the idea of entertaining him, just as a father tells his little child a story so he’ll fall asleep.
The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel is a story of love, dominated by fatality, jealousy, the abuse of power, treachery, and a guilt complex. A moving and terrible story, the most expressive image of which is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces.
BLU-RAY AND DVD BONUS FEATURES INCLUDE:
▪ Deleted scenes
▪ “Pedro Directs Penélope” Featurette
▪ “On the Red Carpet: The New York Film Festival Closing Night” Featurette
▪ “Variety Q & A with Penélope Cruz”
▪ “The Cannibalistic Councillor” (La Concejala Antropófaga) – an original short film by Pedro Almodóvar.
Broken Embraces is written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar and stars Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanco Portillo. José Luis Gómez, Rubén Ochandiano and Tamar Novas. The film is produced by Augustín Almodóvar and Esther Garcia.
The Blu-ray Disc version of Broken Embraces is BD-Live™ enabled, allowing users to get connected and go beyond the disc via an Internet-connected Blu-ray player. Download exclusive content, register for rewards, give feedback through our survey and more!
