Bitter Christmas      Director: Pedro AlmodóvarCert: NoneGenre: ComedyStarring: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria LuengoRunning Time: 1 hr 51 minsIf there are turquoise kitchen appliances and a blue sweater that perfectly matches hospital screens, you know it’s a film by Pedro Almodóvar. Bitter Christmas is a playful, tangled meditation on film-making, memory and the ethics of turning real lives into art. Eventually, at least. For at least the first half of the film you’ll be squinting at characters such as “dishy firefighter, but also stripper at weekends” and wondering if the Spanish auteur is phoning it in. The director’s latest begins with Elsa (Barbara Lennie), a once-celebrated film-maker now directing commercials while battling migraines, creative paralysis and a complicated personal life. Her friend Patricia suspects her husband is having an affair, while Elsa herself escapes to Lanzarote with various friends whose lives she cannibalises into a new screenplay. Then the film abruptly shifts. We meet Raul (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a writer-director revealed to be creating the very story we have been watching. As Raul struggles to finish his screenplay, he also incorporates elements of his own life and those of the people around him into his writing. What follows becomes a hall-of-mirrors drama about artistic theft, confession and self-mythology. At times the film-within-a-film structure is busy and overcomplicated. Almodóvar gradually pulls the threads together into a sharp and unexpectedly brilliant punchline. If only he had let us in on the joke a little earlier.