Review: In ‘Strange Way of Life,’ a master director peeks behind the myth of the Old West

Soaked in red wine, two cowboys roll around kissing with a voracious desperation for each other’s bodies. A bacchanal of tender manliness, this flashback in Pedro Almodóvar’s brisk English-language short film “Strange Way of Life” delivers the essence of the central love affair: a tempestuous but undeniably blazing bond. With this tantalizing gay Western, the Spanish master of sensual entanglements takes another stab at short filmmaking starring major Hollywood actors following 2020’s “The Human Voice.”

In the appropriately named desert town of Bitter Creek, somewhere along the American Southwest, Jake (Ethan Hawke), a stern sheriff, must resolve a recent murder. But the sudden arrival of Silva (Pedro Pascal), an old secret paramour who’s crossed the arid landscape with a mission, derails the investigation with sexual tension and resentment.

The pair’s post-coital reminiscing of their time together in Mexico decades in the past, as well as the eventual recriminations they both spew, calls to mind a scene in the director’s 2019 semi-autobiographical “Pain and Glory.” Late in that film, Antonio Banderas’ character has a conversation with a former partner that reeks of finality. Here, it’s the tense aftermath of violence that allows them the time to excavate their pent-up feelings.

Almodóvar weaves in precise details into each of their exchanges to elucidate the heterosexual lives they both constructed to abide by society’s expectations. By casting the splendid Hawke and Pascal, both archetypically masculine in appearance and demeanor, the director subverts the figure of the strapping, womanizing vaquero, while offering compassion for men who, like them, never fully got across the border into self-acceptance.

Ethan Hawke, left, and Pedro Pascal in the movie “Strange Way of Life.”

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Hawke’s face, charged with the heavy burden of regret and repressed desire, only occasionally softens in the presence of Pascal’s Silva, a more conciliatory force who willingly stares straight into the barrel of a pistol in order to finally get a raw reaction from the man he still adores. Hostile in nature, the unresolved divide between them crackles with passion, a testament to the performers’ dexterity to tap into a melodramatic tone.

The film’s vibrant collection of costumes differ from the norm in a movie of this genre, but they feel wholly in tune with the sensibilities of a director with such an indelible touch for aesthetically pleasing environments and wardrobes. An admirer of classic American cinema, Almodóvar imprints his style into the tropes of the traditional Western, bending them to the needs of his cinematic will.

From his point of view, it’s not too far-fetched that two bandits who spent many a day together could fall in love. If there’s anything to begrudge him here, is how successfully he makes one long for more time with these characters.

Produced in partnership with fashion house Saint Laurent, the boot-wearing romance laced with gunpowder seems to take both its title and pained yearning from the Portuguese song “Estranha forma de vida,” which plays over the opening credits. An exploration of queer heartbreak set against a hyper-virile, rural backdrop, “Strange Way of Life” could be seen as a glimpse into Almodóvar’s version of “Brokeback Mountain” that never materialized.

When, to the celestial score of composer Alberto Iglesias, Silva answers Jake’s question of what two men could do alone in a ranch together, his simplicity lands with a thunderous truthfulness. Leave it to Almodóvar to take our breath away right before galloping into the sunset.