Penélope looked exquisite in a vintage Gianni Versace ivory column gown with vertical signature Gianni Versace zippers in the back of the dress. It’s nice to see something other than black which she’s been choosing a lot here lately.

I have updated the gallery with over x128 pictures from the festivities. Watch a video of her on the red carpet after the break.

Update 1) – Although not really a surprise, Penélope Cruz did not win Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. That honor went to Mo’nique for her outstanding work in Precious. Nicole Kidman presented the award and Pe blew her a kiss to the stage.

Update 2) Kate Hudson presented the clip for Nine‘s entry in the Best Movie Musical or Comedy category.

Update 3) Several shots of Penélope in the audience, like during Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech.

Update 4) The award for foreign language film went to The White Ribbon and not Broken Embraces. Sophia Loren presented.

Update 5) Reese Witherspoon presented the award for Best Comedy/Musical to The Hangover, unfortunately Nine lost. Lots of shots of Miss Cruz shown in the audience again!

Update 6) Celebrities signed a Chrysler 300 Eco Style car for Stars for a Cause, view images of Pe here for now. I will add them to the site shortly. This Chrysler 300 is one of seven in existence.

Update 7) Penélope Cruz is attended the Belstaff The Weinstein Co. Golden Globe After Party. View the first photos of her and Marion Cotillard here.

Misc. Updates
• Nine‘s song “Cinema Italiano” lost to “The Weary Kind” (Theme From Crazy Heart).

• Stars are wearing ribbon pins on their outfits in support of Haiti.

• Pe gave a red carpet interview with E! News and when Ryan Seacrest pointed out she was holding her own umbrella, she joked, “I knew I would be holding my own umbrella. I’m not like Puff Daddy [Diddy], I hold my own umbrella.” She of course she was referring to Diddy’s infamous personal assistant and “Umbrella Holder,” Farnsworth Bentley.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Broken Embraces is up for Original Screenplay and Film Not in the English Language while Nine also sees longlist nominations in Costume Design, Sound, Music, Marion Cotillard for Lead Actress

Residents of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are able to cast their votes! The awards ceremony will take place in Dublin, February 20th, 2010.

The 2010 Goya Award winners will be announced on February 14 in Madrid. The Goya nominations were selected from 120 eligible Spanish and Latin films released in Spain.

And why not? Cruz would be the first to acknowledge that Almodóvar made her — or at least she made the acknowledgment yesterday. “I was almost a little girl when I met him,” she added in her first comments to the crowd. “I was 17. I was too young for the part he was [casting] then, for Kika. He told me he would write something for me in the future, and he did. We worked together for the first time in Live Flesh [in 1997]. And of course he has changed. I have changed. Our relationship has changed and is constantly changing. We’ve gone a through a lot of years together. I can’t compare what I have with Pedro to what I have working on another movie. I’m not not just there working; I’m going through another adventure, and I’m sharing it with somebody who has been present for the most important times of my life. I was a kid in Live Flesh.”

For his part, Almodóvar — who turned 60 last month — has grown undoubtedly more introspective since that first collaboration. Broken Embraces is the director’s most self-referential film in a career full of them: When we meet one-time filmmaker Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), he has changed his name to Harry Caine after an accident that claimed his lover’s life and left him blind. Mateo/Harry is confronted by a bundle of elements from his past that may or may not allow for the completion of his final film, which was butchered by a jealous producer whose lover Magdalena (Cruz) had moved on as the leading lady in both the film and Mateo’s life.

“The truth is I wanted to write a fantasy,” Almodóvar explained in the press conference. “To make a film about a director who, during the course of the film, lost one of his senses. And the crew, taking vengeance out on the guy, will then finish the film however they want. But then the film would then turn out to be a great success. That would really be a film about the vanity of directors. But in reality, the origin of this film came from somewhere else. This really comes from something much more simple and direct.”

To elaborate on those roots would probably be to give too much away, particularly because there are too many inspirations informing Broken Embraces. In detailing the nature of creation, the economy of secrets, the cynicism of the film business, and the messy collision of emotion and sensuality, it’s more than even a gifted craftsman like Almodóvar can shape. Story threads interweave clumsily or go nowhere at all, poisoning the melodrama with a discomfiting tidiness. Led by Cruz, whose secretary-turned-actress roils with ambition and lust, Embraces still glows in Almodóvar’s sincere tradition. It just doesn’t shine.

Which doesn’t not make it a must-see, particularly for the autobiographical quips that reveal increasingly more of Almodóvar as Embraces goes on. “I thought you said no sequels, remakes or biopics,” Mateo’s agent mentions when he contemplates writing a script about Arthur Miller’s abandoned son. I asked afterward if that was indeed Almodóvar’s own philosophy toward storytelling.

“Yes, that’s right,” he replied immediately. “I have to say that I have no interest in remakes, nor making sequels nor prequels nor heroic films nor anti-heroic films or superhero films. Everything else, though, is OK.”

Source: Movieline

Film history has given us a myriad of directors who play favorites, who channel their visions through an actor, using them as their vessel: Think John Ford and John Wayne, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. In the case of beloved Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, his inspiration is, beyond a shred of doubt, the lovely Penelope Cruz.

“Our relationship keeps changing and evolving,” says the actress. “It gets to the point where we often know what the other one is thinking. We really have a strong friendship, but it doesn’t mean I get less nervous when I’m around him on set because he’s so honest. And that’s what I love about working with him — his honesty.”

The latest collaboration for the pair is the multilayered romantic tragedy/film noir Broken Embraces, in which Cruz plays Lena, a failed actress who is manipulated into marrying a lecherous millionaire before she is “rescued” by a dashing film director (Lluis Homar). When their professional relationship slips into a passionate sexual and emotional love affair, jealousy and eventually murder rear their hideous heads.

This is easily Cruz’s best performance to date, and it’s a given that she’d work for her director again — and again — at a moment’s notice. “He’s had me as a whore giving birth on a bus, as a nun who gets pregnant from a transsexual. He’s a genius, and when he calls, I drop everything for him. It’s a natural fit.”

Source: Metro

The picture, Almodovar’s fourth collaboration with Cruz, which is in competition at the Cannes film festival, recalls “films noirs,” classic comedies and screen sirens of the past.

It includes a scene from Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio In Italia starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders and the film-within-a-film revisits Almodovar’s 1988 hit Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
“I fully believe that cinema can make life more perfect,” the Oscar winner told reporters recently after Broken Embraces was warmly applauded at a press screening.

Cruz plays Lena, a secretary, who ends up in a relationship with her wealthy boss Ernesto. Also an aspiring actress, she is spotted by the charismatic director Mateo Blanco with whom she quickly falls in love.

When Mateo loses his sight in a car accident, he adopts his pseudonym Harry Caine and reinvents himself completely in order to avoid the painful memories of the past.

Almodovar likened his character’s experience to that of his home country, saying Spain rightly buried its past after the end of fascism in the 1970s.

“At that time, it was necessary to forget the past. Spain has been a democratic country for over 30 years now… Things have changed a great deal. The time has come to recover these memories from the past. It is even indispensable to do so.”

ACTING CHALLENGE

Cruz said playing Lena as well as Lena’s character in the film-within-a-film was a test of her acting skills.

“The film in the film wasn’t easier, I’d say quite the opposite, it was even more difficult,” said the 35-year-old, who has been battling a bout of ’flu in Cannes.

“Playing the same scene several times, once well and being a good actress and then playing it badly, is extremely subtle, very tricky,” added the star, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. “Sometimes on the same day I had to go from one character to another … so it was all a little bit confused.”

Asked to compare working with Almodovar and Allen, she said, “They could not be more different … With Pedro, we always rehearse for a long time before. Woody doesn’t like to rehearse. He really likes everybody to improvise. It’s really a very, very different way of approaching things.”

Almodovar is best known for strong female roles and he again paid tribute to the women who raised him. But the director, a favourite in Cannes, who has yet to win the Palme d’Or, said men would have more prominence from now on.

“So far my male characters intimidated me somewhat because for a male character, I had to take myself as a reference, but now I feel less and less intimidated and so you are going to find more and more male characters in my films.” Almodovar said he did not expect to win Cannes this year.

“I am going to be leaving Cannes on Friday so I don’t get the impression that I am waiting for an award,” he said, before adding: “But I am quite prepared to come back on Sunday even if it’s to get an award for the best actor or the best director.”

Also featuring in Cannes recently was Italian competition entry Vincere, directed by Marco Bellocchio. The film, based on the true story of a mistress cast aside by Benito Mussolini, offers a different perspective on the Italian fascist leader.

Source: Screen India

It’s possible any of the noted foreign films could spill over into a few other categories. Perhaps Penelope Cruz has an outside shot at best actress for Rotos (though the film’s relatively mild reception doesn’t bode particularly well), as does non-Cannes foreign entry Coco Before Chanel‘s lead Audrey Tatou (the film has already opened in France, where it’s been a huge success). Screenplay, and occasionally director, have always had a tendency to be supplementary gifts for foreign language films, so if Ribbon or Prophet in particular really take off with critics this fall (which I’m sure they will), it could happen. But for the major categories, one should always look to the English language, as that’s how Oscar voters tend to like their movies.

Source: IndieWire

The star shot Broken Embraces with fellow Spaniard Pedro Almodovar at the same time as making Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Woody Allen.

She said: “It was good to be able to pass each of them messages – they seem to like each other very much.”

Penelope, who has made four films with Almodovar, said the two directors’ approaches could not be more different.

While Almodovar gets his actors to rehearse scenes thoroughly and likes to re-shoot sequences in different ways, she said, Allen prefers having virtually no rehearsal or preparation, and encourages improvisation.

“It’s a very very different way of approaching film,” she said.

Broken Embraces, which tells the story of a film-maker who goes blind after an accident, and his struggle to re-engage with life, is in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Source: The Press Association

The movie got an explosive reaction from the crowd, another extended standing ovation and reaction from the earlier press screening was also buoyant. Many have noted that the noir-ish tale of love and jealousy is a darker tale for the filmmaker, but the movie also has many moments of humor.

Source: USA Today

The gallery has now been updated with over 500 images from all of these events. Enjoy!

The festival runs May 13-24. It’s a safe bet saying we will be seeing Miss Cruz in attendance at the film’s premieres and photocalls! Here’s to hoping though!

Cruz delivers a compelling, subtle perf as a woman continually aware that the shadow of tragedy hovers over her. But because her character is effectively split into three — Magdalena the grieving daughter, Lena the actress and lover, and Pina in “Girls and Suitcases” — auds will struggle to locate an emotional center behind the thesp’s dizzying range of costumes and wigs.

…

Visually, the pic is an exquisite treat. Every richly hued wall is covered with eye-candy artwork, every doorway reps a second level of framing, and there is beauty even in the scattered contents of a drawer or in a pile of torn-up photos. Closeups are regularly used, particularly of Cruz’s hypnotically photogenic features.

Oscar-winning director Almodovar’s latest film Broken Embraces drops his distinctive comic melodrama for the best tradition of “film noir,” the dark and stylish film genre used in many crime dramas.

Set for release on March 18 in Spain and in the rest of Europe in May, the film stars recent Oscar winner Penelope Cruz in the role of a tragedy-dogged aspiring actress.

“The film noir genre is one of my favorites,” Almodovar told reporters at a screening of the film on Friday. “The fact this film was really “black” was what was very satisfying.”

Broken Embraces centers on a quartet of characters in the movie business whose lives are interwoven in a torrid tale of love, power, secrecy, betrayal and vengeance. There is the actress Lena (Cruz), script writer and director Mateo, film producer Judith and unscrupulous financier Ernesto

The dark and stylish cinematography recalls classic Hollywood thrillers of the 1940s and 1950s, including one scene where Lena’s jealous lover pushes her down a long, winding staircase, evoking a similar scene in Henry Hathaway’s The Kiss of Death.

Almodovar described Broken Embraces — his 17th film and with the highest budget yet of 11 million euros ($14.16 million) — as “the story of my love for the cinema.”

Spain’s most famous director is known for melodramatic tragedy mixed with frenetic comedy in films like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!.

He won the Oscar for screenwriting Talk to Her, about two men who form an unlikely bond when both their girlfriends are in comas, and he has only flirted with film noir style in earlier films, such as Trembling Flesh.

Broken Embraces marks the fourth collaboration between Almodovar and Cruz, who last month won the Oscar for best supporting actress in a role as an eccentric Spanish painter in Woody Allen’s Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona.

Cruz was effusive in her praise of Almodovar.

“I’ve been obsessed with his films since I was a youngster,” she said, adding that if she were told she could only work with one director for the rest of her life it would be “without doubt” Almodovar.

Source: Reuters

Speaking Friday at the Madrid press screening of Pedro Almodovar’s Embraces, in which she stars, Cruz said, “We’re starting to talk but I can’t confirm anything concrete as yet.”

Castellitto wants Cruz as lead femme in Venuto al Mondo (Into the World).

The Sarajevo-set drama about a single mother is based on a novel by Castellitto’s wife, Margaret Mazzantini, as was Don’t Move. Castellitto’s producers, Roberto Cicutto and Luigi Musini, are currently putting together finance on World.

Pic is unlikely to start filming this year: Cruz said she intends to spend most of the year promoting Broken Embraces during its international roll-out, which lasts through November.

Embraces played to a huge media turnout at its first public screening here in Madrid.

A love story and genre blender — part meller, thriller and romantic drama — laced with Almodovar’s trademark humor, Broken Embraces turns on the competition for the affections of an actress (Cruz) between a Spanish magnate (Jose Luis Gomez) and a film director (Lluis Homar).

Almodovar’s 17th film is loaded with film references, from Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy to his own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

“My film is my declaration of love for cinema,” Almodovar said.

Warner Bros. will release Embraces in Spain on March 18 on around 250 prints, a middling print-run strategy that worked well for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.

Producer Agustin Almodovar said that Embraces had been presented for selection at the Cannes Festival. Its absence from Cannes would be a major turn-up for the books.

Source: Variety

A man lives, writes and loves in the dark.

Fourteen years ago he suffered a brutal car accident in the island of Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain).

In the accident, not only he lost his sight, but also lost the woman of his life, Lena.

This man uses two names Harry Caine, playful pseudonym under which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, under which he lives and he signs the films directed by him. After the accident, Mateo Blanco is reduced to his pseudonym, Harry Caine.

He cannot direct movies; he is suffering from the burdem of losing his lover, and he likes to think that he also died in that horrible accident.

So Harry Caine basically lives thanks to the scripts he writes and because of the help of his old and faithful Prodution Director, Judit García; and Diego, son of Judit, a typist and secretary. Diego is also Mateo’s guide, as he is completely blind.

Ever since he decided to live in order to tell stories, Harry became an active and attractive blind man who has strengthened his other senses to enjoy his life, with high dosages of irony and a self-inducted amnesia.

He has completely erased the first identity of his biography, Mateo Blanco.

One night Diego has an accident and Harry looks after him (his mother, Judit, is out of Madrid, and they decide not to tell her about the accident in order to not alarm her).

During the first nights of convalescence, Diego asks Harry to tell him about the time at which he responded to the name of Mateo Blanco.
Harry is taken aback at first, but he finally accepts to tell Diego about the incidents that took place fourteen years ago, in order to entertain the boy.

He begins to tell him the tale, like a father would do for his little child to fall asleep.

The tale of Judit, Lena, Mateo and Ernesto Martel is an amour fou story, dominated by the fatality, the jealousy, the abuse authority, the treason and the guilty complex. An exciting and terrible story; its more expressive image is the single photo of two lovers embraced, torn up into a thousand pieces.

The first will be the newest film from Pedro Almodovar, the highly anticipated Broken Embraces. The last time Pedro and Penelope got together, they made the incredible Volver, which netted Cruz a nomination and worldwide acclaim. Very little is known about the plot of Embraces but it will reportedly open soon in Europe. American audiences will have to wait until November 6th, 2009.

Just a few weeks after Broken Embraces opens stateside, Penelope Cruz will be seen again in Nine, the highly anticipated musical from Chicago director Rob Marshall. With nineteen Oscar nominations and nine wins with only two movies (his sophomore film was Memoirs of a Geisha), anything Rob Marshall has in production has to be taken very seriously and this one has Oscar potential written all over it.

Nine co-stars an amazing six Oscar winners. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the lead with Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, and Penelope Cruz in supporting roles. Kate Hudson and Fergie also play supporting parts in the adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical of the same name based on Federico Fellini’s autobiographical 8 1/2.

Source: Hollywood Chicago

Exact details on the film are still scant but Almodóvar has stated that the film will resemble a 1950s American film noir but will be set in the 1990s.

“Penélope’s character in my film lives two very different, almost opposing, lives, that naturally must be characterized, among other things, by very different hairstyles. In the first characterisation, Penélope is brunette, serious, hurt, pursued by fatality, a fighter with no luck, a fallen angel. A woman taken from a 50s thriller and transferred to the 90s. In the other facet of the character, she appears as blonde, light, pop, naïve, outrageous, exultant.” – Pedro Almodóvar

The film will be released in March of this year in Spain and will have limited release in the U.S. starting in November of 2009.

…Penélope’s character in my film lives two very different, almost opposing, lives, that naturally must be characterized, among other things, by very different hairstyles. In the first characterisation, Penélope is brunette, serious, hurt, pursued by fatality, a fighter with no luck, a fallen angel. A woman taken from a 50s thriller and transferred to the 90s. In the other facet of the character, she appears as blonde, light, pop, naïve, outrageous, exultant.

His blog also chronicles the many hairstyles that he tried on the Spanish actress through candid photos.So what can we expect in this film? That is a bit tricky with Almodóvar, who has a body of work that is beautifully diverse. His films range from Volver which champions familial female bonds  to the wildly homo-erotic Mal Educación (Bad Education), a film with virtually no female characters. His films can be deadly serious like Carne Trémula (Live Flesh) or zainy like Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). However, there are certainly some trends in many of his films. Almodóvar seems to love taboos. His films have pregnant nuns with AIDS, transvestites, and tackle difficult subjects like sexual abuse. These films often play around with the sexuality of its characters.

Reportedly  Almodóvar made Cruz gain weight for a more curvy figure in Volver, and, not completely satisfied with the results, made the actress wear a prosthetic butt for much of the film. In the film, her tousled hair, dark eyeliner, and enhanced figure results in the curviest and most deliciously sexy Cruz ever. With so much effort spent solely on Cruz’s hair style in and its relation to her character in Los Abrazos Rotos, it looks like Almodóvar is up to his old tricks.

Release details: The film will be released in March of this year in Spain and will have limited release in the U.S. starting in November of 2009.

Source: Examiner

I spoke to Cruz over the weekend. She was calling from somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles, on a cell-phone. At first, the signal died, and I thought, oh well, modern technology! But Penelope didn’t give up. She got to a landline. Cruz has the sort of vital personality that leaps right off the screen, and right through phone wires too. She pulls you in. (When I met her in the flesh a few years back, I was blown away by her good looks, her lively intelligence and her energy.) It’s hard to believe this vibrant star was thought to be something of a “flop” in American films, with the early disappointments of All The Pretty Horses and Vanilla Sky. Also hard to believe she was ever involved with Tom Cruise. That friendship, which blossomed in the wake of his divorce from Nicole Kidman, was tabloid fodder only nine years ago, but it seems like 20, somehow. She says she is thrilled to have been nominated again. (Her first bid for Oscar was 2006′s Volver, directed by her old friend and mentor, Pedro Almodovar.) “Although, I have to call my family everyday, in Spain, to calm them down, so they don’t get too hopeful.” When I remark that “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” wasn’t a “typical” Woody Allen movie, and that he seems quite the revitalized auteur over the past couple of years, Penelope protests. “Really? I think he’s always re-inventing himself, over and over. He can do anything. Compare, ‘Scoop’ to ‘Purple Rose of Cairo’ or to ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ or ‘Bullets Over Broadway’”… Penelope gives such a compelling dissertation on the work of Woody Allen, I finally concede, lamely, “Well, I guess it’s that he’s changed locale. Most of his movies used to be set in New York. Now he’s gone European.” Penelope allows that yes, I’m right on that one.

The actress speaks English perfectly, though with a strong, charming, accent. She recalls with horror her first adventures in American moviemaking (she was already a great star in Spain.) “I’d studied French for years. But I had no English, nothing, zero. It was terrible not to be able to really understand your director or your co-stars. I took a crash course, and luckily I picked it up quickly.” Cruz took ballet for nine years at Spain’s National Academy. With that training, has she ever played a dancer? “No, I haven’t. But I did get to dance and sing and a lot else in ‘Nine.’ I do the number ‘A Phone Call to the Vatican’ which has me performing with ropes. I hadn’t danced at all in 14 years. I practiced that number every day, five hours a day from August to November. When we finally shot it, I was so sad when it was all over. It had become part of my life. Now I’m thinking of hanging some ropes around my house, just to remind me of the joy I had with that.” Penelope laughs heartily when I say ropes hanging from her ceiling might alarm first-time visitors!

Of the filming itself she says, “It was an incredible experience, because I am in a blinding spotlight, and I couldn’t see beyond it. It was all darkness, and I’m performing on a mirrored platform. All I could think was, I’m never going to do this again, which made me unhappy, I’m terrified and the fear is kind of beautiful, and I so don’t want to disappoint Rob Marshall, the director.”

The movie Nine, an adaptation of Tommy Tune’s Broadway hit ( based on Fellini’s famous film “8½”) also stars Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Stacy Ferguson and Kate Hudson. It is one of 2009′s most eagerly awaited events. And it is another Weinstein Company effort. Ah, yes, the world is breathing easier!

I said to Penelope that I’d always thought a dance background — no matter what you eventually end up doing — improves discipline in general. “You are right! A dancer’s life is hard. And so is an actor’s, though most people don’t see it that way. They only see the glamour. But that discipline helps when I have to work 17 hours a day, or it’s cold, or hot or horribly uncomfortable in some way. Or just boring, which fimmaking often is. I feel I am more prepared to face an on set adversity.”

Up Next for Penelope is Broken Embraces, once again paired with Pedro Almodovar. She raves over her friend, “He is a genius. He writes the most incredible roles for women. In this one, ‘Broken Embraces,’ I am an actress playing two roles, one comedy, one drama, one real-life, one the movie she is making. A movie-within-a-movie. It’s complex, mind-blowing. I am so lucky to have him in my life.

“He is ITAL already ITAL writing another screenplay. He never stops. And he never compromises. He is totally honest. I think he would give his life for his movies; he is that passionate. He loves all movies, and sees everything. We are ITAL both ITAL obsessed with movies, actually.”

I ask if, in her passion for movies she can still lose herself in them? Forget that she herself is an actress?

“Oh, yes I can. I don’t think I will ever lose that. Especially if the movie is good. Then I never think about the technique or the camera or lighting or I wonder how many takes ITAL that ITAL took, or why wasn’t this a close-up or long-shot. I become an ordinary audience.”

But, what if the movie isn’t good? Penelope laughs, “Oh, God. Then I totally exhaust myself picking it apart. I leave the theater feeling I’d just come off that set, on a bad day. It’s much easier for me when the movie is good!”

I congratulate Penelope again on her nomination. I ask, because it’s the tiresome but necessary question, if it ITAL really ITAL matters to her if she wins? “Hmmm…what can I say? It’s not a lie that it is an honor to be nominated, and if I don’t win, I won’t be any less honored, but…look, ask anyone who is nominated. No matter what you think you feel about awards, when you’re there, sitting in that seat, with those people, all dressed up–ITAL of course ITAl you want to win!”

Source: Variety

Cruz, who received a best actress Oscar nomination for Almodovar’s previous film, Volver, will play a provincial actress in the movie, which has been shooting in Madrid and the Canary Islands. Working from his own screenplay, Almodovar has described the movie as an amour fou involving four characters (played by Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lluis Homar and Jose Luis Gomez) in the style of a hard-boiled, ’50s American film noir. The cast also includes Rossy de Palma, Kiti Manver, Chus Lampreave, Lola Duenas and Angela Molina, who will play Cruz’s mother.

Produced by the director’s brother, Augustin Almodovar, Embraces is the 10th Almodovar film that SPC has handled. In addition to Volver, SPC was the domestic distributor for Almodovar’s foreign-language Oscar winner All About My Mother, his best original screenplay Oscar winner Talk to Her and foreign-language nominee Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

SPC brokered the deal with the Almodovars’ production company El Deseo. Universal International Studio, Uni’s foreign production arm, is co-financing the film with El Deseo. Uni’s Focus is handling worldwide sales outside of Spain, France, the U.K., Benelux and Switzerland.

Source: HollywoodReporter.com

Calling from Madrid, where she is currently shooting director Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, Cruz sounds somber. There is only a hint of the warm, passionate quality that she naturally exudes in face-to-face conversation, a quality that not surprisingly attracts her male co-stars and then, if a romance starts, the paparazzi.

The 34-year-old actress is tired of being more famous for her boyfriends – her exes include Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey – than her work. So she is in lockdown mode, poised to deflect questions about her current boyfriend, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who earlier this year won an Oscar as best supporting actor for his work in No Country for Old Men (2007).

The situation is particularly complicated because Bardem is her co-star in Woody Allen’s latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a romantic comedy that presents them as Jose and Maria Elena, artists and lovers who have a tempestuous relationship. Not until an American artist-wannabe (Scarlett Johansson) arrives and they embark upon a menage a trois do things calm down.

Would Cruz be willing to share a man?

“When I’m preparing a character, I don’t ask myself, ‘What I would do in this situation?’ ” she says evasively. “I don’t feel I have to be like them. I just need to understand them.”

What can she say about her kissing scene with Johansson?

“I’ve been asking Woody to give me some interesting lines,” she jokes. “I don’t have any funny stories, just that the set was more crowded than ever that day!”

Cruz flourished under Allen’s direction, she reports.

“It’s very interesting to see how, in most of Woody’s movies, comedy can come from real pain,” she says. “That’s always the irony of life. When I read the script I laughed, but when I was preparing the character and shooting I completely forgot about everything that could be funny. I felt I was doing a drama.

“Woody was very clever in making sure that none of us were aware of the moments that could be funny,” she adds. “Maria Elena suffers so much. I was very surprised when I saw the movie with an audience, and saw how much people laughed. All the characters are struggling and trying to resolve deep problems and big questions, and it’s very funny.”

Until recently Cruz’s most critically praised performances have been in European films such as Live Flesh (1997), Open Your Eyes (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Don’t Move (2004) and Volver (2006), for the last of which she was nominated for an Oscar as best actress. Initially such English-language films as The Hi-Lo Country (1998), All the Pretty Horses (2000), Blow (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001) and Sahara (2005) used her beauty more than her acting abilities, but she credits her increasing command of English for her ability to play more complex English-speaking characters in recent films.

“Now, after working and living for part of the time in America for a few years, I feel more free and relaxed,” she says. “You need the language to survive. That’s how you learn.”

In her film Elegy, playing in theaters in larger cities, Cruz plays a student who falls in love with her college professor (Ben Kingsley). The film is based on Philip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal (2007), and investigates the power of love and the effect that beauty can have on a relationship.

“I love the complexity of the characters,” Cruz says. “My character ignores (her beauty) out of respect for herself. She’s not allowing it to be an issue. He’s so afraid of falling in love with her because, in many ways, she’s more the adult. She has her own fears, but he has many fears that stop him from being brave enough to try to be happy.”

Until this year Cruz has had to content herself with less challenging work in American movies.

“I don’t want to complain about the ones I did earlier,” she says, “because I had a lot of opportunities to work with wonderful people. But the characters I’m being offered now in English demand more of me emotionally and at different levels.

“I couldn’t have played Maria Elena five years ago,” the actress explains, “because I had much less control of English. Many times Woody asked us to improvise and go back and forth in English and Spanish.”

Although Maria Elena is on screen for less than half the movie, she is hard to ignore.

“I was fascinated by Maria Elena,” Cruz says. “I don’t think I would want to be her in real life, but she was very attractive to play. A lot of it had to do with understanding her mind and the pain that she’s in 24 hours a day. She lives in a dark space and is very tortured. Her head is her prison.

“She’s the most extreme character I’ve played in English,” the actress says. “Every time she comes into a scene, she brings chaos. She doesn’t do it on purpose – it’s the only way she can relate to another human being.

“I didn’t want to treat her like a crazy person. I wanted to create a reality and find all the justifications she uses to behave like that.”

Cruz has been creating alternate realities since she was a child growing up in Madrid. The eldest of three children of an auto mechanic and a hairdresser, she studied acting informally at her mother’s salon.

“I used to get quiet there to be able to observe the women,” she recalls. “I’d wait for them to relax as much as possible so I could see them in action, the way they were with my mother, all their different behaviors. Women are complex. It was a very good school for acting.”

Which was good, because her real school wasn’t going so well.

“I’m strong and opinionated,” Cruz says bluntly, “and those qualities brought me a lot of problems since I was a little girl in school, saying, ‘I don’t agree,’ and fighting with the children.

“It’s OK,” she continues, “because it’s part of my curiosity for life. I don’t want it to change because of fear of what people think. I’m a Taurus, so I have the combination of temper and stubbornness. I think it’s helped me a lot in my career to be stubborn.

“I developed discipline as a child by studying ballet,” she adds. “I worked hard for what I wanted. I never expected things to come by themselves.”

Cruz made her film debut at 17 in Jamon, Jamon (1992) and has worked steadily since, gaining international acclaim with her three Almodóvar films, Live Flesh, All About My Mother and Volver. Broken Embraces, their fourth collaboration, is every bit a match for its predecessors, she says.

“What Pedro wrote is beyond beautiful,” Cruz says. “I play three characters in one. She’s an actress, so in the movie we have the character she plays, and then she also leads two different lives in her private life.”

Also upcoming for Cruz is her first venture into animation, as she voices a guinea pig named Juarez in Disney’s G-Force, due out next year.

“She has a very big temper,” Cruz says. “She’s also very funny. I don’t think she looks like me, but she has some of my expressions.”

In the fall Cruz will begin rehearsals for Nine, a film musical based on the 1980s Broadway hit that was itself adapted from Federico Fellini’s movie “8½” (1963). She will play Carla, the mistress of the Fellini-esque film director (Daniel Day-Lewis) who is the film’s protagonist.

“I studied dance for 17 years,” Cruz says, “and I’m really looking forward to dancing and singing. ’8½’ is one of my favorite movies. I watch it once or twice a year. It’s perfection from beginning to end.”

Which leaves only one question to answer: What can she say about Javier Bardem?

There is a long silence, before Cruz finally speaks.

“He’s an amazing, talented actor,” she says carefully.

For any further insights, you’ll have to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Source: Reading Eagle