How the west was won (for the gays): The evolution of M4M cowboys on-screen, from ‘Red River’ to ‘Strange Way Of Life’
Strange Way Of Life, Pedro Almodóvar’s second English-language film, finds the Spanish master in another of his self-reflexive moods.
Mirroring his recent autobiographicalmasterpiece Pain And Glory, its story casts Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as waylaid lovers, their characters pulled back into each other’s lives following a tragic event.
Clocking in at just 31 minutes, the short is a minor work but enjoyable on its own sensuous terms, which include a generous shot of Pascal’s bare behind post-coitus.While much of the auteur’s oeuvre looks backward on his own life and career, what distinguishes Strange Way Of Life from Almodóvar’s recent scrapbooks is that the reverse gaze is aimed at cinema itself.
The movie is a meticulously detailed homage to the most hypermasculine of American film genres: the western, a cinematic tradition that dates back to the earliest days of the medium.
