‘Strange Way Of Life’ Review – Pedro Almodóvar’s Uneven Western Short

Pedro Almodóvar’s new short, Strange Way of Life, stars Ethan Hawke as Sheriff Jake and Pedro Pascal as Silva. Almodóvar’s second English-language film follows Jake and Silva as they passionately reunite for the first time in twenty-five years while Silva’s motives for visiting are left unclear, at least in Jake’s mind. With a classic Western setting, the film offers an opportunity to explore male desire for one another in a genre where this is rarely if ever, given the time of day. Coming in at just 31 minutes, this film shows the audience a brief chapter in Silva and Jake’s tale of love and love that has been lost.

In setting the film in a small Western town there comes a lot of interesting craft and production design choices that are the true highlight of the movie. Almodóvar and the crew play on traditional Western visuals and set design while adding some extra flare to really make it their own. A lot of Western films contain little color and many of the locations are seemingly bare with only the essentials needed to live in a town like this. When Jake has Silva over to his house for dinner, we see this is not the case here. While the home may be small, the plates and glasses from which the meal is served are beautiful and show a certain level of care about the quality of things Jake keeps in his home. For Silva, the lasting image from the film will certainly be the opening shot of him riding his horse through the desert donning his beautiful green jacket, brought to us by Saint Laurent, who was heavily involved in the film primarily by providing the costuming. 

While the film looks gorgeous and has a stellar score and soundtrack, it’s clear that Almodóvar is still working out the kinks of writing for English language cinema. His only other effort in that form is also a short, 2020s The Human Voice starring Tilda Swinton. A significant feat of these shorts is the talent he attracts to star in them, and he gets stellar performances from them all. Hawke and Pascal in this particular endeavor do their best with the script, but the dialogue is lacking something that would really make it stand out. It’s not explicitly bad dialogue, but most of it feels in some measure predictable and unoriginal. This makes it difficult to get attached to any of the characters despite their acting work, especially considering the limited run time they have to work with. 

The conceit of Strange Way of Life is intriguing and worth exploring despite the film’s lackluster execution. Almodóvar has called it a “queer Western,” complete with standoffs, outlaws, and retributive justice. The way Jake and Silva feel about each other and express these feelings is appropriate for the time and place they live and gives the audience a glimpse of how hard it is for a man to be attracted to another man in this world of the Western. It would be unfathomable to openly accept their love and act on it outside of a few small moments over their long lives. Their connection complicates the rest of the story and makes some of the choices both characters make confounding to those on the outside of the relationship.

Strange Way of Life is a beautifully shot, narratively uneven story that puts the majority of its weight on Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal’s shoulders. While they are more than up to the task, they can’t quite get past the humdrum dialogue in order to save an otherwise interesting story about forbidden love in the Old West.

Strange Way of Life is currently playing in theaters with The Human Voice courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAFTIamkqSY]