With his most expensive and longest film to date, Spanish maverick Pedro Almodovar celebrates his love of film and his playful fascination with doomed affairs of the heart.

Within minutes of meeting blind screenwriter Harry Caine (Homar), the twinkly-eyed old goat’s seduced a blonde bombshell who minutes before was helping him across the street.

You sense the fifty-something lothario has few pauses for regret. But he has…and this constitutes the lynchpin for Almodovar’s rambling, colourful narrative that vividly paints in Harry’s life before he went blind.

In his earlier existence the scriptwriter – then known by his real name of Mateo Blanco – enjoyed himself as a renowned film director, a passionate artist for whom everything was possible.

He is approached by corrupt industrialist Ernesto Senior (Gomez) who offers to bankroll his next venture – the comedy Girls and Suitcases – on the condition that he casts his lover, the dark beauty Lena (Cruz) in the lead role.

Mateo duly complies but finds himself drawn to the fiery, ambitious Lena and she to him. Soon they’re risking it all in torrid affair…but the suspicious Ernesto is having them watched and has no intention of letting Lena go.

Despite  first-class performances – from Cruz, Gomez and Homar – Almodovar’s narrative appears laboured, offering none of the surprises that lent vim and vigour to his earlier outings.

You’re always going to get plenty of spectacle with the irrepressible Spanish director but here many scenes look over-stylised, day-glo homages to countless Hollywood noirs.

The saving grace is Cruz, who electrifies every scene she’s in, capturing the opportunistic ambition of a girl from humble origins seeking to clamber up the ladder yet never abandoning her scruples.

There’s a lot to enjoy but it’s all to easy to break out of this particular movie’s embrace.

Tim Evans