Spanish historical drama based on the life of 16th century playright Lope de Vega. Returning to Madrid from the war, an eagerly ambitious Lope (Alberto Ammann) is forced to take a job as a copyist while he dreams of finding fame and fortune. He soon falls for his employer's seductive daughter, Elena (Pilar López de Ayala), little realising that she is in fact already married. When she refuses to end her marriage for a future with the struggling writer, Lope causes a scandal by publicising their affair. Now accused of slander, Lope goes on the run, where he soon finds help in the form of his childhood friend, the beautiful Isabel (Leonor Watling).

First screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Pedro Almodóvar's powerful and passionate semi-autobiographical melodrama follows the intertwining stories of two boys, Enrique (Fele Martínez) and Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), who fall in love at an abusive Catholic school and are parted by a jealous paedophile priest. Sixteen years later, Enrique, now a successful filmmaker, is casting about for an idea for a new film when a young cross-dressing actor, claiming to be Ignacio but known as 'Angel', approaches him with a short story based on their schooldays together. Enrique decides to use the story, and casts Angel in the film's lead role, despite his discovery that Angel is not in fact Ignacio, who died three years earlier shortly after completing the story, but his younger brother. Enrique's film also includes scenes in which the grown-up Ignacio tracks down the Catholic priest who abused them as boys, and these scenes soon become mirrored by real-life events. Almodóvar moves away from his trademark quirky comedy with this dark and brooding drama, using a complex 'film-within-a-film' structure to create a noir-like sense of mystery and blurred identity, and to explore the relationship between fantasy and reality.