Pedro Almodóvar explains the true sexiness of Pedro Pascal's revealing “Strange Way of Life” scene
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The first scene Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar ever wrote for the story that would become the short film Strange Way of Life was the morning after. Two cowboys, Pedro Pascal's Silva and Ethan Hawke's Jake, reunite in their older age after a decades-long absence and awaken in a slight haze from a wild night of wine and sex. Silva lies on Jake's bed, wearing nothing but a henley, as the camera surveys his bare haunches. Then the two men anxiously fumble to find their missing clothes.
"From the very beginning, I knew that they would have this great orgy, but I would handle it within an ellipses," Almodóvar recalls to EW through a translator, referring to how the screen fades to black as Silva and Jake start kissing each other before cutting to the shot of Pascal in bed. "Basically, the words are naked, what they say after," the director adds.
That's ultimately the essence of Strange Way of Life, playing now in theaters alongside Almodóvar's other equally brief work The Human Voice. Viewers of the 30-minute short may hone in on the Last of Us actor's revealing backside moment, and those on social media have already been obsessing over the rather suggestive frontal shot involving Pascal's henley that occurs directly after. But Almodóvar feels the story is much sexier in the scenes that don't involve sex.
Sony Pictures Classics Ethan Hawke's Jake and Pedro Pascal's Silva in 'Strange Way of Life'
"Beginning with that first dinner that they have, it's already with the gazes that they begin, if you'd like, to undress each other," Almodóvar explains. "In fact, Pedro Pascal's character does say at one point, 'Don't look at me that way,' because it makes him uncomfortable. Also, at the end of the dinner, Pedro Pascal is drinking and watching the bed. And a bed is a bed. It's very clear what it means. There's that scene where Ethan Hawk's character is undoing his bowtie and then I cut to a closeup of Pedro's ass and you can see the bed in the background. I think that's a very sexy scene without the need to actually undress them."
In Strange Way of Life, Silva arrives on horseback in the town of Bitter Creek in 1910 on a mission to save his son, Joe (George Steane), who's been accused of murder. Complicating matters is Jake, who's the town's acting sheriff in charge of bringing Joe to justice after an eyewitness came forward. A brief flashback sees rising talents José Condessa and Jason Fernández playing the younger versions of the main characters, who met and fell for each other as hired gunmen. Even that sequence, in which Condessa's Silva and Fernández's Jake ravage one another while drinking from the spouts of a wineskin they poked full of bullet holes, is more than just sex.
"They're getting very drunk, and they start almost devouring each other," Almodóvar comments on the scene. "I don't know if this is clear in the film, but they can't quite consummate that desire at the time. They don't get to f---. They get to make out and they're hot for each other, but even from the very beginning, the relationship is not necessarily based on sex."
Sony Pictures Classics Pedro Almodovar directs Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal through a scene in 'Strange Way of Life'
The short has been pegged as Almodóvar's answer to Brokeback Mountain — the director behind Parallel Mothers (2021), Pain and Glory (2019), and Broken Embraces (2009) was once courted to helm that movie. In truth, Almodóvar was influenced by a particular scene: Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack envisioning a peaceful life with Heath Ledger's Ennis raising animals on a ranch together. "The character [played by] Heath Ledger said, 'But what can you do, two men on a ranch?' or something like that," Almodóvar says. "Pedro Pascal gives the answer to Heath Ledger 18 years after [in Strange Way of Life]." However, the filmmaker doesn't feel the comparisons to Brokeback Mountain and his short are justified. "Really the only link that I see between the two films is about what two men would do on a ranch together," he continues. "I like Brokeback Mountain very much. I think the acting is great, but beyond that point, I don't think the films are similar."
Almodóvar was more intrigued with the idea of featuring something the typically machismo-marked Western genre has rarely featured on screen: two men in love. "Even now, they keep on doing it that way. Just the series, Kevin Costner [in] Yellowstone, is still respecting the rules of that genre at the beginning," he remarks. "There are many male characters. Even his daughter is more masculine than all of them. And I think now, this is 2023, we can talk about different aspects of living for these cowboys."
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