Strange Way Of Life Review: A Delicate Glimpse Into The Cost Of Abandoned Love [Cannes 2023]

As the siren song of a young cowboy rings out around him, Pedro Pascal's Silva opens Pedro Almodovar's "Strange Way Of Life" with a sense of trepidation and desire, the insatiable need to reconnect. The short film, produced by the Anthony Vaccarello-led era of the luxury brand Saint Laurent, traverses the desert to find the remnants of love buried deep in the heart of the Western landscape at the hands of both Pascal and his co-star, Ethan Hawke. The pair melt and mold their connection into a passion play that cycles between light and dark, and through their work, the short film becomes a poignant and effective harbinger of the cost of abandoned love.

"Strange Way Of Life" follows Pascal's Silva as he journeys across the desert to meet his longtime friend and former lover, Jake, in a Western town called Bitter Creek. It's been 25 years since they've seen one another, and Hawke's Jake is a sheriff now — but their reunion turns emotional and violent when a dire matter of honor clouds the nirvana of finding each other once more and the question of "Why not?" hovers all around them.

It should come as no surprise that Pascal and Hawke excel in this film. They're both storied, respected actors that generally give audiences gold time after time, but they take things a step further in the way they nail the complicated tone of Silva and Jake's forsaken love. There is a real sense of emotional confusion within Hawke, who allows Jake to be complicated in his love for Silva and shines in the gray areas of their persistent bond. Pascal's Silva is devastating, a cowboy resigned to the weight of passion in his heart for a man who feels lost to him. And when the two collide, it explodes into something of a supernova — but the reignition of their love burns fast and hard, crashing into something bittersweet as Jake's duty to the law rears its ugly head. Pascal and Hawke are the backbones of Almodovar's story, and they each approach their characters with an immense amount of grace, even in the film's harshest moments.

As expected, the film's costuming is incredibly slick. Saint Laurent's garments pair well with the visual aesthetics Almodovar serves his audience: contemporary yet with many classic touches befitting a classic Western. In that way, the film, on the whole, comes off fresh and new, a modernization that feels different from its classic predecessors and even its clear-cut inspiration, "Brokeback Mountain." The costuming enhances the beautiful Spanish landscapes on which the film was shot, building an overall tone for the film that invites the audience in.

That said, it's impossible not to come out of this film with a couple of other gripes. The film has a great story — but one that desperately calls to be fleshed out more. "Strange Way Of Life" would've worked immensely better as a feature. Silva and Jake talk a lot about what happened between them and how those around them have factored into the deterioration of their love, but it would have been even more fruitful if we could have seen those events actually play out. There is one very intense and important flashback in the movie, but more flashbacks of this nature would have deepened the emotional core of the story. Sure, the audience can make sense of what is happening and catch onto past events, but it would've been much stronger to see those events and subsequently the shape the film would take as a longer and more full picture.

For all of Almodovar's talk of how sexy his version of "Brokeback Mountain" would have been, it feels as though his impulse was to tamp things down with this short, which doesn't entirely hold water. This was, in a lot of ways, his opportunity to do his version of "Brokeback," and it doesn't align with what he's spoken about in the past. It's a bit frustrating when the writer-director chooses to fade to black in an emotionally bare moment that leads to Silva and Jake's first physical encounter in 25 years.

It would have been nice to see the physical expulsion of the pent-up passion between the leads for more than just those few seconds or the short clips of their encounter Almodovar splices in between a moment of contemplation for the pair. Pascal and Hawke don't ever kiss on the lips, either, which feels like a choice, but one that doesn't make sense when it comes to the kind of unbridled passion Almodovar clearly wants to convey between them.

The film's ending is a bit of a knock-out, and it shapes the context of the story in a way that plays on your mind well after the credits roll. As Pascal traps Hawke in a physical prison of his own design, they both resign to rot in the emotional prison of their feelings for one another. It's a bold gut punch that illustrates how far gone these two characters really are, and how much their bond has enslaved them over the years despite being apart. 

It's a smart ending, one that feels like the natural evolution of the stakes Almodovar creates. However, it — and the film as a whole — would have been better served with more meat to chew on — an expansion on the backstory that leads us there in the first place. "Strange Way Of Life" is a delicate glimpse into the complicated emotional life of two men; men who breeze past friendship and find themselves connected and tormented by the bold bonds love can unexpectedly build. But with a longer runtime, the film would've been able to give us a fuller picture.

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10