Following his English-language debut The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodovar returns to many of his pet themes with Bitter Christmas. Sony Pictures Classics has released the trailer for Bitter Christmas, a female-focused tragicomedy that tells dual stories on guilt, memory, identity, creative control, and autofiction.
Bitter Christmas tells parallel stories, one set in 2004 as Elsa, an advertising director, takes a long weekend to a Spanish island to spark her creative writing. The second tale is set in 2026 and centers on Raúl, a filmmaker working on a script that happens to be about Elsa, her stripper boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia.
The cast is filled with a mix of Almodovar’s past collaborators and some new faces. Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit, Quim Gutiérrez, and Rossy de Palma star.
SYNOPSIS: Bitter Christmas tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl’s alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can’t help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant.
Bitter Christmas hits theaters later this year.
