Pedro Almodóvar's latest film Broken Embraces may impress movie geeks but overall it’s a bit of a yawn.

The film opens with a middle aged blind man, who is slightly balding, end up making love to a gorgeous young blonde woman who helped him across the street and then went to his house read the papers for him. Plausible? Well that pretty much sets the tone for this movie that looks nice yet feels contrived from the off.

The middle aged man is an ex-director Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar) who now writes screen plays and has adopted the pseudonym of Harry Caine.

As the action unfolds Blanco recounts the story of his previous life and his passionate love affair with Lena (Penelope Cruz). His previous life is something that Blanco is trying to forget.

The movie does look great and there were some clever nods to previous directors notably Hitchcock but even though its noir feel elicited some feelings that this could have a decent thriller aspect or an element of intrigue worth persevering after a couple of hours it did not really add to much worth raving about. Almodóvar fans will probably not have a bad word to say for the film but for me it’s way short of past glories like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Matador.

Penelope Cruz typically lights up the screen in her scenes and is probably the only thing worth watching but aside from that it feels quite long and tedious.