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Stories within stories inspired by other stories unfold in vivid intricacy in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest triumph of metafiction. We first meet Elsa, an actor and filmmaker struggling with panic attacks, who finds support in her eclectic network of friends and lovers. To get to the root of her crisis, she seeks inspiration in those around her—their shared pasts, their own domestic dramas—and her latest screenplay begins to spring forth. But Elsa is a work of fiction herself, a figment of filmmaker Raúl’s imagination as he scripts his newest opus. In the twilight of his career, Raúl grasps at novelty, but he too finds himself drawing, to an alarming extent, from the lives of his own cadre.

The act of drawing inspiration is at once noble and vampiric in this playful study of creativity. Existing in the liminal space between reality and fiction and balancing the vibrance of his early films with the melancholy introspection of his later work, Bitter Christmas sees Almodóvar continue to reflect on artistic identity and his own career and legacy, while coming to terms with his mortality.