Penelope Cruz shines in her element in ‘Broken Embraces’

An Iberian dream team joins again for “Broken Embraces.” Even if the late season movie crop for 2009 seems less fertile than usual, master storyteller Pedro Almodovar releases another of his original, sexy and engrossing entries for arthouse audiences. His muse Penelope Cruz slinks with full-bodied lusciousness across the silver screen here. As always, she’s at her most vibrant and affecting when she’s acting in her native language Spanish and doing it for him. And the consistent, prolific director-writer of personal comedies/dramas featuring fascinating women for more than 20 years distinguishes himself with her as they did in “Live Flesh” (1997), “All About My Mother” (1999) and “Volver” (2006).

In their fourth feature collaboration, Cruz doesn’t play the protagonist. Instead, the auteur casts her as a hybrid of damsel-in-distress and femme fatale whose female potency compels men to do things they shouldn’t. We learn about Lena, a former call girl with aspirations to be an actress, in flashback. The main character, blind screenwriter Harry Caine (solid anchor Lluis Homar), dredges up his memories of their dangerous liaison upon the death of her corrupt tycoon lover Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez).

Powerful and obsessed, Martel used the illness of Lena’s father to coerce her to become his live-in mistress back in 1992. But soon Lena auditions for a celebrated, then-sighted director who used to call himself Mateo Blanco. Mateo/Harry is instantly taken with her, casts her as the star of his new picture, and begins a passionate affair with her. A lethal love triangle develops. The controlling and suspicious Martel makes himself the film’s producer and uses his strange grown son (Ruben Ochandiano) to stalk the illicit paramours with his camera.

Martel’s death, back in the present day, returns Ernesto Jr. into Harry’s life. This eventually forces Harry’s manager and best friend Judit (Tamar Novas) to confront the secrets she still holds about the fateful events of the past.

Though not a crucial or profound piece, this smoldering yarn combines strongly realized characters with elements of film noir and film homage. Almodovar sends up his own body of work, making the movie being shot within “Broken Embraces” a blatant take-off on his own 1988 breakthrough, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

It’s a clever ploy by a clever filmmaker who pulls terrific performances out of actors and pulls us deep into his intricate, imaginative narratives.