“Pedro Almodóvar’s Queer Western Triumph at Cannes with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal”

“Yes. I am seen queer westerns, but in no western have two men made the bed!” 30 minutes that Pedro Almodóvar brings to Cannes, a queer western in which two “macho” Hollywood sex symbols, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, exchange glances full of desire, orgiastic kisses under jets of red wine, embraces in the bedroom. And it’s a triumph.

An applause enormous, in the Debussy room, greets the director of La Mancha, who in his own way is a Spanish West, on his arrival. And an even bigger, interminable applause greets the director at the end of the screening, everyone standing, a mix of amusement, emotion and affection for Pedro and his cinema. And this film is a mixture of melodrama, romantic history and “theatrical” western, with many interiors and few boundless lands, this film. More Douglas Sirk than John Ford, one might say, John Ford feels too. Brokeback Mountain had already been there to tell us about two cowboys who love each other; there was Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, with its rough but gay-loving cowboy. “But this is the first time that, after the embrace, two cowboys are seen making the bed!” says Almodóvar.

“Why a short film? That’s the beauty of being successful: you get to choose. I didn’t want to make a series, I didn’t want to make a film. I wanted to do just that!”, he says cheerfully, speaking a little in Spanish, a little in English. “I didn’t want to make a spaghetti western, I didn’t want to imitate Sergio Leone: I wanted to make a classic western, but one that spoke of desire between two cowboys. In the classic western we never talk about desires between men. I did it”. And it is as if he had staged a gay love lived along the wild paths, the red shadows and the fiery middays of the old American myth, between John Wayne and Henry Fonda.

“I chose Ethan Hawke because he’s a versatile actor, he can be welcoming but also bossy. He has a look that can be cold and distant and hermetic and secretive, and that’s what I wanted, compared to Pedro Pascal, who in the film is the one with the most open feelings, the one who isn’t ashamed of the desire he has.” Ethan Hawke , in Cannes alongside Almodóvar, echoes him: “When I received an email in which Pedro invited me to participate in his film, and he sent me the script, I thought: “But then I must have done something good in my life, to deserve this!“. Working with Pedro means abandoning yourself to a director who takes care of every detail. All you have to do is act, and give your best”.

“In my films Previously, I showed explicit sex scenes,” says Pedro. “But here I wanted to show desire and pleasure in another way. A bit like in the film noir of the 50s. Here I play with the viewer’s imagination”. And when Hawke is asked how he feels about being the object of desire of Pedro Pascal – right now the Hollywood sex symbol most loved by ladies and girls, but absent on the Croisette – Ethan replies : “Well, it’s always nice to be wanted! It doesn’t seem like a problem to me…” And the audience applauds. Then they also start imagining a sequel: situations come to mind in bursts, everything that can happen after the last shot. But no spoilers.