Films within films, references-a-goᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ-go, sickness, wome🍨n as actors…

After Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver brought him back to maternal melodrama, this tragi-romantic meta-noir executes an about-swerve to the Spanish auteur’s last-but-one, Bad Education. Embraces occasionally feels li🌟ke Pedro’s settling on old grooves in lieu of finding new moves.

The action cuts between 1994 and now. In the present, Education&r🙈squo;s Lluís Homar plays Mateo, a man who lost his sight in a car crash and pens 💟scripts under a pseudonym, Harry Caine.

When he hears about the death of a dodgy financier, Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), he flashes back to the ’90s, when said money-man funded his f𓂃ilm, Girls And Suitcases, on the conditio💧n that Martel’s mistress Lena (Penélope Cruz) takes a starring role. Lena and Mateo fall in love. Martel isn’t chuffed.

Meanwhile, Almodóvar romances movies. Nods to his Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown and All About My Mother (women, acting, illness) snuggle up alongside riffs on Rossellini (Voyage To Italy) and Vertigo. But the compensation for this familiar self-awareness is Almod&꧒oacute;var’s hungry eye, before which wigs and wallpaper alike drip seಌnsuality.

From wall to gaudy wall, too, the film’s full of fine performances – not least Cruz, whose w﷽holl♊y persuasive feet-first delivery ranges from looking reliably sweet-shop glam to blowing chunks in a bathroom.

Surprises are faintly lacking, though, not least the ‘twist’. What twist? The revelation proves so bathetic, it barely even registers as such. Intimations of mortality anchor the filmꦇ, but Almod&𒁃oacute;var crowds the core issues.

There’s much to enjoy here, but not enough lingering emotional heft.