Strange Way Of Life Trailer Released, Almodóvar Teams With Pascal

Strange Way Of Life is the latest short film from acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar and stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. This queer Western story runs about 30 minutes and is the director’s second English language project. His first was the 2020 short film The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton. The short will make its debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Below is the trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjeurH1r7a4

Strange Way Of Life Should Be One To Remember

“A man rides a horse across the desert 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 hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship… Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, directed by Pedro Almodóvar.”

On an episode of Dua Lipa: At Your Service, the director had this to say about the short film: “This is a queer western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way. What I can tell you about the film is that it has a lot of the elements of the Western. It has the gunslinger. It has the ranch. It has the sheriff. But what it has that most Westerns don’t have is the kind of dialogue that I don’t think a Western film has ever captured between two men. And now I think I’m telling you too much.”

This is a full circle moment, as Pedro was famously offered the director’s chair for Brokeback Mountain, which he turned down after it became clear he couldn’t tell the story the way he wanted to. That is not an issue here, as you can see from the trailer.