Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton give luxuriously self-aware performances as two old friends who are reunited in a doggedly mysterious drama

When this film won the Golden Lion for Pedro Almodóvar at the Venice film festival this summer, there were three kinds of surprised critic. Some were surprised to learn that this was Almodóvar’s first ever major European festival award; others that this should be the film to finally bag it … and then there were those who were politely surprised that it should have won anything at all. I myself found it as extravagant and engrossing and doggedly mysterious as anything he has done recently, with luxuriously self-aware performances from Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and an undertow of darkness often overlooked by yeasayers and naysayers.

It is his first English-language feature, scripted by Almodóvar himself, adapting Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through. Though set in the US, it was also shot on sets and locations in Spain; so the English language novelty might for some expose Almodóvar’s habitual stylisation and make it look shrill and inauthentic. (And, yes, I admit it: a “war photographer” character with airily bohemian and effortless integrity is a bit off-the-peg, and reliance on the “dark web” to facilitate a plot turn is glib.)