I’m not sure how QUEERGURU missed A STRANGE WAY OF LIFE a 30-minute film by Pedro Almodovar, especially after it premiered at Cannes in 2023,  he called it his ‘answer to Brokeback Mountain‘.  

Silva (Pedro Pascal) is riding into town at the same time that his old flame, Sheriff Jake (Ethan Hawke), is looking for the killer of his brother, which he suspects was committed by Silva’s son, Joe (George Steane). Silva plays off his arrival like his only objective was to reconnect with Jake, while the sheriff suspects that Silva is there to protect his outlaw son. Nonetheless, a dinner of stew, drinks, and reminders of their mutual affection leads to the old friends skating vaguely across past joys and wounds, never having made contact since they were stablehands in Mexico 25 years ago. And while they brood over the meaning of their meeting, Almodóvar flashes back to their younger selves—with Silva played by José Condessa and Jake by Jason Fernández—giddy and passionate encounter after drinking wine from bullet holes they shot in a barrel.

When the two lovers  reunite at the start of the film, they are much more open about that past than, say, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger’s characters in “Brokeback Mountain.” …. a film that Almodovar turned down, thinking that the Studio would censor his work too much.  

It received mixed reviews on release, but is still an Almodovar film  which we feel should never be missed amd so we were very excited to discover it is streaming on Amazon Prime,