Bitter Christmas

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Bitter Christmas

R

1h 51m

Drama

Comedy

Holiday

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Watchlist

Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

90%

Tomatometer

49 Reviews

52%

Popcornmeter

50+ Ratings

Bitter Christmas tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl's alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can't help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant. The film narrates the close relationship between reality and fiction, between inspiration and life, exploring the limits of autofiction and stories within stories.

Pedro Almodóvar

Director

Bárbara Lennie

Elsa

Leonardo Sbaraglia

Raúl Rossetti

Aitana Sánchez-Gijón

Mónica

Victoria Luengo

Patricia

Patrick Criado

Bonifacio

Jessica Kiang

Sight & Sound

Jun 4

Still, if Bitter Christmas is just the harrumph before the actual event, it’s a highly diverting one: Nobody clears his throat like Pedro Almodóvar.

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Justin Chang

The New Yorker

May 28

Almodóvar nests one story inside another, leaps between them with breathtaking fluidity, and brings them both to a virtuosic, if abrupt, finish.

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Rory Doherty

AV Club

May 22

C+

Bitter Christmas uncomfortably straddles its twin goals of complexity and amusement, too pithy to take seriously and too flat to be riotously entertained.

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Alistair Ryder

The Film Stage

12h

Almodóvar making one of the least-imaginative, most-familiar stories he could conceive still offers plenty of surface pleasures; his late style may be in the shadow of former glories, but it was always going to look a lot better than most contemporaries.

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André Didyme-Dôme

Rolling Stone en Español

6d

Bitter Christmas is a mature, restless, and deeply personal work that transforms creative crisis, guilt, and pain into cinematic material. [Full review in Spanish]

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Nataliia Serebriakova

FILMINK (Australia)

Aug 6

16/20

… despite all its strengths, the film leaves a slightly familiar aftertaste.

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Dani G

@RT81139271 Aug 1

Mature... Reflexive... In the same line as Almodovar's recent work

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I S

@gidkYs-xyxsyc-tycbi8 Jul 11

I give it half a star so thaht I can write this review but would gladly give it none. That it has very good actors is no doubt. All have made excellent movies in the past, but the problem is clearly not the acting tbut the script, the story or should I say the non-story. It is just simply one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time. The trama moves aimlessly through time... which becomes unbearable as I waited desperately to see the word FIN...the end just to say I had been able to conquer the boredom and disbelief that this movie actually made it to the theaters. Someone close to Almodovar should be honest with him with the movie or the idea behind the movie just doesn't work. There is no need to pretend this is just a colorful, nicely photographed, terrible movie.

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Doug R

@DouggyRand Jun 13

Almodavar is a generational filmmaker but this one will be lost to time.

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Alejandro E

@Alex970 Jun 5

El mayor temor de todo cineasta, la página en blanco, en una trama que sabe combinar lo real y lo fantástico de manera que sea fácil para el espectador seguir la pista sin abrumarlo a base de sub tramas.

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Wellington A

@RT34692909 Jun 3

Adorei como ele desenvolve o filme e engana você até um certo ponto... a partir do momento que você entende de fato o que está acontecendo, tudo fica fantástico. Atenção às cores das camisas dos personagens por favor.

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Eye C

@ECinc Jun 2

Pues no ha funcionado para mí, me pareció poco interesante y lenta. Aunque debo de reconocer que escribir acerca de un autor escribiendo acerca de un autor escribiendo es muy meta.

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Synopsis

Bitter Christmas tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl's alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can't help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant. The film narrates the close relationship between reality and fiction, between inspiration and life, exploring the limits of autofiction and stories within stories.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Producer: Agustín Almodóvar
Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Production Co: Movistar Plus+, El Deseo, Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA), Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO)
Rating: R (Some Sexual Material|Language)
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Holiday
Original Language: Spanish
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 13, 2026, Limited
Runtime: 1h 51m

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