Bitter Christmas: Almodóvar's Russian doll stories

With the title and release date, you might be confused. Just to be clear, Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas is not a Christmas movie. In fact, in press notes, Almodóvar says “Bitter Christmas is quite the opposite of a Christmas story.” Perhaps we might want to think of this film as about “the flesh becomes word”, in that it takes stories of others and gives them new life.

There are two narratives going on. The first is in December 2004. Elsa (Bárbara Lennie) is a onetime filmmaker who created two flops that have since become cult classics. She is reduced to making commercials, but wants to make another film. She has a boyfriend she met at a club where he was a stripper, but his real job is as a firefighter. Her friends deal with various life issues that she tries to mine for script ideas. Her friends, however, are not fond of having their pain be included in a story.

BÁRBARA LENNIE as Elsa, MILENA SMIT as Natalia in ‘Bitter Christmas’ Copyright El Deseo. Photo by Iglesias Más. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The second narrative involves another filmmaker, Raúl (Leonardo Sbaragilia), who is struggling in 2026 to come up with an idea for a script. His longtime assistant has just quit to be with a friend in grief over the loss of a child. His life partner Santi has taken over the duties of scheduling and supporting the auteur in the creative process. Raúl also is trying to bring the trials in the lives of his friends into his writing. They also are upset that Raúl is telling their painful stories.

If you note that there are strong parallels in the two stories, it is because (as we learn early on) that Elsa’s story is the screenplay that Raúl is writing (which has the title Bitter Christmas). As the film goes back and forth between the stories, we see Elsa as Raúl’s alter ego, in the same way that Raúl may be serving as Almodóvar’s alter ego. It becomes something like a Russian Doll, with each story nesting in another.

BÁRBARA LENNIE as Elsa, MILENA SMIT as Natalia in ‘Bitter Christmas’ Copyright El Deseo. Photo by Iglesias Más. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

This film is an exercise in what Almodóvar refers to as autofiction and meta-cinema. It is examining the relationship between reality and creativity. We may wonder which of the two narratives is the most real—even though we know they both flow from Almodóvar’s mind, and one of them is a creation of his creation. It ponders the ethics of an auteur in using the lives of people he knows when writing a story or making a film.

Writing all that, I should note that the film itself is not as cerebrally complex as my last paragraph. Fans of Almodóvar’s films know well that he can play mind games with the audience. They may even expect to have him blend reality and surreality. That challenging of our perceptions is what draws people to his films. All of that boils down to a kind of IYKYK. If Almodóvar is on your list of favorite filmmakers, you’ll be in for Bitter Christmas. Others might still find the film enjoyable if they let themselves be entranced with the characters and their lives. I expect there will be others who will use the film as an example of why they don’t like art house films.