Almodóvar’s Revisionist Western

Pedro Almodóvar doesn’t take long to repair the cultural confusion caused by Brokeback Mountain, that largely forgotten 2004 conversation piece widely known as the “gay cowboy” movie. In his new 30-minute short, Strange Way of Life, he corrects the delusions by which mainstream media paraded its superficial, dishonest acceptance of homosexuality. Nearly 20 years later, Spanish auteur Almodóvar, admired for the resplendent sex comedies Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Skin I Live In, and Pain and Glory, sets the sexual record straight, so to speak.