If not slowed down on typical duties, as evidenced by last year’s much-loved Parallel Mothers, Pedro Almodóvar’s recently expanded the scope of his projects. His Tilda Swinton-starrer The Human Voice stood among his best-liked work in a while, and nobody in their right mind complained it only cracked the 30-minute mark. We’d accordingly be pleased to hear he’s turning to another half-hour-or-so endeavor, all the more with word it’s a Brokeback Mountain-inspired western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal made with the very thick, perfectly stylized purse strings of Saint Laurent, whose Self line has boasted work by Abel Ferrara (Sportin’ Life), Gaspar Noé (Lux Æterna), and Wong Kar-wai (who “curated” an ad.)
Entitled Strange Way of Life—the name taken from Amalia Rodrgues’ song that will open the film—it concerns “a pair of middle-aged gunslingers” and will shoot in Spain’s Almería region end of August. Details are scant, though Almodóvar tells Indiewire that Brokeback Mountain inspired his film as a kind of what-not-to-do. Feeling Ang Lee’s film, which at one turn he nearly directed, lacked an animalistic reverie necessary to the central romance, he’s fashioned a “very intimate” project about a long-time-coming reunion. Hawke plays Jake, a sheriff, and Pascal is Silva, a gunslinger; they live on opposite sides of the desert and meet after 25 years. The ensuing showdown bears romantic undertones, or so Almodóvar says vis-à-vis masculinity being his key subject.