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Pedro Almodóvar regifts his own pithy, self-critical autofiction in Bitter Christmas

It's familiar stuff from the playful Spanish auteur, which isn't always a bad thing, but it doesn't get going until too late.

By Rory Doherty  |  May 21, 2026 | 2:00pm
Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
Film Reviews Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar regifts his own pithy, self-critical autofiction in Bitter Christmas

How do you respond when a filmmaker announces to the audience that his latest film is a minor work? In the case of Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, this self-critique comes late in the game through the dramatic avatars of a very Almodóvar-styled director, Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and his no-bullshit agent Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), who are locked in a fierce debate about whether Raúl has total freedom to crib the painful experiences of his close circle, or if he’s just bring a prick. More than usual, one must proceed with caution here to separate the Spanish auteur’s sincere reflections on autofiction and his tongue-in-cheek pastiches of creative narcissism. 

Almodóvar is a playful master of narrative misdirects and tonal pivots, but he also playfully restages episodes from his own experience and career—case in point, 2004’s Bad Education, 2009’s Broken Embraces, and 2019’s Antonio-Banderas-as-Almodóvar Pain And Glory. How seriously should we take these reflections on making art from life where Almodóvar’s stand-in is a vain, petty, proud loser? According to the director, Bitter Christmas is “the film where I’ve been cruelest with myself,” but the cruelty is never present without a knowing wink.

This isn’t new territory for Almodóvar, who’s long dug into his faults and hangs-ups—and therein is part of the problem with Bitter Christmas. Almodóvar is a prolific filmmaker who can defend himself from accusations of retreading ground by pointing to the clear evolution in his style and sophistication across his 40-year career—from racy, subversive comedies to female-driven melodramas and dark thrillers that are shocking as they are subdued. Of all the filmmakers competing in this year’s Cannes, he has the most certified bangers under his belt, and he distinguishes Bitter Christmas from Pain & Glory by focusing mostly on a different, more distinctly fictional filmmaker: Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a two-time director whose creativity has waned after her films failed to click with audiences and her mother passed away. (Elsa’s story is set in 2004; Raúl’s in 2025.)

Now, she shoots commercials, and seems satisfied—or at least diverted—by her hunky younger boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado) who’s a firefighter that moonlights as a stripper. When she suffers from her first panic attack, she is drawn back to writing, distancing herself from her boyfriend “Beau” in a picturesque Lanzarote villa and using the marital woes of her friend Patricia (Victoria Luengo) as inspiration, unable to clock her screenwriting as parasitic because, to her, it feels like rejuvenation.

If this doesn’t sound massively dramatic, that’s because it isn’t—after the first act introducing Elsa’s comfortable but unfulfilling life, her story only goes in a few limited directions. There’s the fallout with Patricia, followed by her kinship with grieving model Natalia (Milena Smit), all relayed in Almodóvar’s now reflexive late period style: clean, sly angles of actors clad in bright-toned designer clothing, lounging in exquisitely and deliberately designed homes, accompanied by Alberto Iglesias’ pervasive string-heavy score. As before, it creates a unique heightened mood, but it is over-familiar. Still, this story doesn’t need to be independently substantial—it’s all just the story that Raúl is inventing to save himself from creative drought and to avoid making a high-paying appearance at a festival in Qatar. 

In “reality,” Raúl also has a younger, attractive partner, but he uses the fantasy offered by fiction to make his boyfriend a pinch sexier—or maybe, kitschier. In an early Raúl scene, he visits a strip club with Mónica to get inspiration; he’s informed by the proprietor that they no longer do stripping there, they’re a full-on sex club. When we see Beau’s act, the way it’s been tamed and tacky-fied for Raúl’s script is an amusing insight into Almodóvar’s process. (Beau is a firefighter and a stripper? Only a hack or a genius would do this.)

There are plenty of highlights to Bitter Christmas, which are easy to list but harder to argue their contribution to a powerful whole: Songs by acclaimed Mexican singer Chavela Vargas (including the titular “Amarga Navidad’) are well-deployed; there’s a tender scene where Elsa’s panic attack is calmed by a friend’s singing, moving her and Beau to tears; a nurse asks her filmmaker patient to give a thorough explanation of the “cult film” label. Bitter Christmas doesn’t properly kick into gear until the final act with a mile-a-minute metatextual and mean-spirited duel between spiteful Raúl and an incandescent Mónica about the artist having carte blanche over other people’s private lives.

It’s entertaining because the film’s playful autofiction critiques blend with petty, middle-aged insults, a no-holds-barred duel between two people who’ve known each other for decades. We get only short glimpses into their relationship, but Almodóvar’s wit and the confident performances of Sbaraglia and Sánchez-Gijón create a strong impression of a loving but wearied relationship. Alas, this lightning bolt of sizzling conflict comes far too late, and the moment where the credits roll ought to be the film’s midpoint. Bitter Christmas uncomfortably straddles its twin goals of complexity and amusement, too pithy to take seriously and too flat to be riotously entertained.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit, Quim Gutiérrez
Release Date: May 19, 2026 (Cannes)

 
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