Pedro Almodóvar’s short film, Strange Way of Life, opens with an establishing shot of a man riding his horse across the desert landscape, letting you know that, if you were unsure before, this is indeed a Western. But underneath that establishing shot is a melody sung by a ‘balladeer’ (Manu Rios) whose only job in this film is to undercut that very Western, ‘masculine’ image with his delicate song.
I’ll be honest, I don’t watch a lot of Westerns although I remember the ones I have seen being fun. All I truly know about them is that there are macho men with hats, guns, horses, and maybe a robbery of some sort. But I do know about Elite, the show on Netflix where Rios plays Patrick. For me, an Elite viewer and outsider to the Western genre , watching Elite’s pretty boy (and openly gay) Patrick sing a ballad over Strange Way of Life’s opening shot sets the scene: this will challenge your perceptions.
It is revealed later that the horse rider, Silva (Pedro Pascal), has ridden into town to visit his old friend, Sherriff Jake (Ethan Hawke), who he claims to have missed. These two have a romantic past and spend an evening reminiscing on it but, the next morning, Sherriff Jake lets Silva know that he is pursuing Silva’s son who is a suspect in a murder. Did Silva really miss Jake or was he reappearing after all these years to help his son?
Almodóvar stated that this film captures conversation between two men in a way that Westerns don’t usually do and, on seeing this, I was intrigued to know what place queerness has historically had in the Western genre. Something I noticed in my *very* quick Google search is that although there is a perception of Westerns as hypermasculine and promoting of the ‘macho man’ image, they have portrayed men as having to lean on each other in order to move forward, showing a vulnerability that could be seen as ‘weak’ in hypermasculinity (and one which I don’t think should always be attributed to queerness). Perhaps films like Strange Way of Life make the subtext more obvious. There is a conversation towards the end of the film between Jake and Silva that more explicitly addresses how ‘two men on a ranch’ can care for one another.
That being said, Strange Way of Life sometimes felt theatrical, and I can’t make up my mind on whether I think that was intentional or not. I went into it knowing it was a queer Western and perhaps expecting a deeper story, but I have wondered if I missed some things watching it. I’m intrigued to hear what people in the communities that it represented or those who have followed Pedro Almodóvar’s work think about it.
Strange Way of Life is available in theatres in Toronto on Friday, September 6th, 2023 and rolls out over the next few weeks across Canada.
