Los Abrazos Rotos and Lost: Two Reviews

Last night I watched the two-hour season premiere of Lost. I should offer up front the disclaimer that I had the flu so was not in top form, though was quite happy to recline on the couch for an obscene length of TV time (I also watched the one-hour series recap that came first). I am a loyal fan, not just of Lost but in general. Once I decide that I like something, I'll work hard to maintain my attitude. This has not always been easy with Lost, which has gotten unnecessarily complicated at some points, but while some may disagree, I think I do see plot strands coming together and improbabilities are resolving. Locke didn't come back from the dead: the smoke monster (a.k.a. the man in black) is possessing him. We've seen this before (Christian Shepard, Eko's brother, Alex Linus), so rather than introducing something new, the show has given us a recurrence of a pattern that has run through the whole series--it turns out that the new and different Locke is actually the monster, something we should have guessed (and many did). Similarly, the bomb blasted apart the causal loop and created two parallel universes. Each of these is consistent with time travel conventions, and the shift from the former to the latter is pretty cool, if indeed that's what's going on, and I could be wrong. So, in sum, I still find the show too complicated for my worn-out mid-week brain, but I am encouraged and hopeful that it is on track.

In an odd contrast, I found Almodovar's Broken Embraces to be too simple. I just saw it tonight, so perhaps after I think about it for a few days I'll want to revise my opinion. The characters weren't especially complex, the story unfolded in expected ways, and the themes about vision and possession were straightforward. It's a good movie but not a great one and certainly not up to Almodovar's usual standard.