Broken Embraces / Los Abrazos Rotos (2009)

Broken Embraces (Spanish: Los Abrazos Rotos) is a 2009 Spanish film written, produced, and directed by Pedro Almodóvar; a four-way tale of dangerous love, and was shot in the style of a hard-boiled 1950s American film noir, or its descendant, the neo-noir genre. Many themes include noir references such as film posters in sets, angular, high contrast lighting and the characters' struggle with their illicit passions. However, like most Almodovar films, it is filmed in bright color rather than the black-and-white emblematic of noire. The cast includes Penélope Cruz, Ángela Molina, Lola Dueñas, Lluís Homar and Rossy de Palma.

Plot: "Harry Caine" (Lluís Homar) is a blind writer who shares his life with his agent Judit (Blanca Portillo) and her adult son, Diego (Tamar Novas). Slowly, events in the present begin to bring back memories of the past. Harry hears that millionaire Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) has died; a young filmmaker, Ray X, appears and turns out to be Martel's son, Ernesto, Jr. (Rubén Ochandiano). After Diego is hospitalized for an accidental drug overdose in a Madrid nightclub, Harry collects Diego from the hospital and looks after him to avoid worrying his traveling mother. The main storyline is told in flashback as Harry reluctantly tells Diego a tragic tale of fate, jealousy, abuse of power, betrayal, and guilt. The first flashback is to 1992, which introduces Magdalena "Lena" Rivero (Penélope Cruz), Martel's beautiful young secretary, an aspiring actress. She becomes close to Martel, a millionaire financier, in order to find the money to help meet her dying father's medical bills. By 1994, she has become Martel's mistress. At this time, Harry is still living under his real name, Mateo Blanco, a well-respected film director. Martel is excessively possessive of Lena, but she is determined to become an actress and manages to win the main role in Blanco's film Chicas y maletas (Girls and Suitcases) by bringing Martel in as financier/producer. The fictional film is similar to Almodóvar's 1988 release, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, except that the Shiite terrorists have been replaced by a cocaine dealer; several of the cast of the previous film appear in the fictional one.

Martel spies on Lena and Mateo by sending his inhibited, effeminate gay son, Ernesto, Jr., to videotape the production of the film, ostensibly for a "making of" feature, then hiring a lip-reader (Lola Dueñas) to interpret the conversations. Martel, seething with jealousy, screens the videos as the lip-reader narrates the furtive whispers of Lena and Mateo's passionate affair. Furious, Martel confronts Lena, and when she threatens to leave him he pushes her down the stairs. But when she survives the fall, he relents and nurses her back to health. The filming completed, Lena and Blanco escape Martel's hold and go on holiday to Lanzarote. Lena takes a job as a hotel receptionist to pass the time. When she and Blanco read in El Pais that Chicas y maletas has received a terrible critical reception, likely the end of Blanco's directing career, they determine to start over together far from Madrid. Fate intervenes when Blanco is seriously injured and Lena is killed in a car accident, which ironically is immortalized by Ernesto Jr., who has been trailing them with his camcorder. Mateo loses his sight permanently. Judit, his long-time production assistant, and an 8-year-old Diego arrive to help Blanco pick up the pieces and return to Madrid, where he eventually writes screenplays in braille under the pseudonym Harry Caine, represented by his agent, Judit.

–from wikipedia