Ethan Hawke has just signed on to star in Pedro Almodóvar’s next film, strange way of lifea half hour western.

The Spanish director will shoot the short film before debuting in the English feature film, A manual for cleaning ladieswith Cate Blanchett.

Hawke stars alongside the Chilean Pietro Pasquale, who played Oberyn Martell game of Thronesin a film that will be “another exercise in freedom along the lines of the human voice”Said producer Agustín Almodóvar.

The short will be shot in English. Installed in El Deseo, the Madrid-based production company of the Almodóvar brothers, Strange way of life begins with a man, Silva, riding through a desert to Bitter Creek. He is here to visit Sheriff Jake. They met 25 years ago when they worked together as hit men.

the plot

“Silva arrives under the pretext of reuniting with his childhood friend. They celebrate their reunion. But the next morning, Sheriff Jake tells him that the real reason for his visit is not the memories of their old friendship …”

“I don’t say anything else because I don’t want to reveal all the surprises of the script”Pedro Almodóvar wrote in a statement released this Tuesday by El Deseo.

The title of the film, he explained, echoes the title of a famous fado written and sung by Amalia Rodrigues. His lyrics state that there is no stranger existence than one that ignores one’s desires, which raises the question to what extent the film might revolve around desire, rather than normal western motifs.

“In all his films Pedro reinterprets genres, questioning their codes”said Agostino Almodovar.

Strange way of life The cast also includes young promises Jason Fernández, José Condessa, George Steane and Manu Ríos, as well as Pedro Casablanc and Sara Salámo.

It will be shot in the Tabernas desert in Almería, in southern Spainand also in the settlement that Sergio Leone had built 50 years ago to shoot his own spaghetti western trilogy dollars with Clint Eastwood. El Deseo is also building a ranch near Madrid to shoot other scenes in the film.

Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent will oversee costume design and take credit from the associate producer.

“We will try to self-finance and catch up later. This it was shot with the freedom we had when we made the Super 8 movies in the 1970s, but with 40 years of experience in the sector, ”said Agustín Almodóvar.

In the Hollywood Academy Museum

By the way, a few months ago, Pedro Almodóvar pointed out his cinephile passion visiting the new Hollywood Film Academy museum designed by Renzo Piano for a cost of 482 million dollars and in which, edited by himself, his cinema has a large immersive space.

-What did you feel when you saw yourself in the Hollywood museum?

-Besides the flattery that at the Hollywood museum that tells the history of cinema Two rooms with 12 big screens have been dedicated to me, I was shocked to see that all those images were created by me. And I felt proud.

For this montage I did a work of reflection that I had never done before, taking one of my films and dissecting it. I discovered the themes I touched most and there are sections like Bergman and melodrama, because he inspired me with the great melodrama of high heels. There are also displays on comedy, desire, thriller, family … and mothers.

Historical memory and “Parallel Mothers”

-In the screenplay of parallel mothers He explains that he reduced the theme of historical memory so that the film was not eaten …

-Just look at the news and see the damned difficulties that the Democratic Memory Law has. And little is said about mass graves. They are more attached to the 1978 amnesty law, very difficult to touch because then the political forces did what they could, frightened because there was a lot of Franco in the institutionsand not in vain three years later there is a military coup.

I hope that everyone understands that the issue of graves is extremely urgent, it is the great-grandchildren who are asking for the opening and, once they have disappeared, the generation of the great-grandchildren will no longer deal with them. In the concessions that the left and the right made in the Transition, the inexistence to which Franco had condemned the buried has returned, they no longer existed.

CJL