Almodóvar will premiere his gay western shot in Tabernas at the Cannes Film Festival in May

Film director Pedro Almodóvar has announced that he will premiere his new film shot in English ‘Strange way of life’, a gay western starring actors Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, at the next Cannes Film Festival (France) to be held at the Month of May.

As the filmmaker himself has advanced in Dua Lipa’s ‘At Your Service’ podcast, his new project will be a “queer western, in the sense that there are two men and they love each other” where the characters played by Pascal and Hawke will experience that situation in “an opposite way.”

“It is about masculinity in a deep sense, because the western is a masculine genre,” Almodóvar has advanced, while pointing out that the film “has many of the elements of the west”, such as the ranch or the ‘shariff’ , according to the specialized portal ‘Variety’.

The film, which part of its filming took place in Tabernas (Almería), is based on the story of the rancher Silva, a man who crosses the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek on horseback to visit Sheriff Jake, with whom he makes 25 years shared a life of hired guns.

As has been said, the two protagonists have been played by Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal although the “promising youngsters” Jason Fernández, José Condessa, George Steane and Manu Ríos have also participated in the filming, as well as the actors Pedro Casablanc and Sara Salámo. .

Filming began last summer, in August. It was the filmmaker’s brother, Agustín, who shared on his Twitter account some images of the director posing together with Pedro Pascal and the also interpreter Manu Ríos -who also days before was seen in a local restaurant- in the surroundings of the town from the West selected for production.

As the production company announced in June, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello has been in charge of the costume design for the project that alludes to the famous fado by Amalia Rodrigues.

In the province, previous works for the filming were also carried out. Weeks before the filming began, the sets used in his day by Sergio Leone for his film productions were prepared to shoot this project.

“I shouldn’t say more so as not to reveal all the surprises in the script,” Almodóvar said in previous public appearances in which, however, he revealed some details of the project in which its protagonists have “a strange way of life” and in which he alluded to “the famous fado by Amalia Rodrigues, whose lyrics suggest that there is no more strange existence than the one that lives with its back to one’s own desires.”

The plot

As the synopsis was revealed, a man crosses the desert on horseback that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as gun-for-hire.

Silva comes under the pretext of reuniting with his childhood friend and, indeed, they celebrate their reunion although, the next morning, Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not the memory of their old friendship.

The tape had, as expected, a great expectation in the province and, also, outside of it. The mayor of Tabernas, José Díaz, already declared in this sense, after meeting, the choice of the Almeria settings, that the director from La Mancha chose Tabernas to put the “media focus” on the desert of the Spanish Southeast with his new film work and, specifically, in the mythical sets linked to the ‘spaguetti western’ to shoot ‘Strange way of life’.

The mayor highlighted the fact that a director “so laureate and recognized” as Almodóvar resorts to the Tabernas stages is “without a doubt the best promotion of the desert” in “the so fashionable film tourism” that has been progressively recovered since the removal of restrictions derived from the covid-19 pandemic. And not only the presence of Almodóvar but that of internationally recognized actors such as Ethan Hawke, who will star in the film.