Pedro Almodóvar Said This Was His Answer to Brokeback Mountain. Then Pedro Pascal Got on a Horse, Put on a Green Jacket, and Made Everyone at Cannes Forget Every Other Film in the Festival.
A 30-MINUTE QUEER WESTERN. PEDRO PASCAL as Silva the cowboy. ETHAN HAWKE as the sheriff he has loved for 25 years. A bare back scene that went viral. And ALMODÓVAR explaining the difference between his film and its predecessors: “They didn’t f***.”
In June 2022, director PEDRO ALMODÓVAR announced a queer Western short film starring PEDRO PASCAL and ETHAN HAWKE. Thirty minutes. Produced by Yves Saint Laurent. Premiering at Cannes. The internet’s response was immediate and unanimous: absolutely yes, without hesitation.
The film was called Strange Way of Life — titled after a 1960s Portuguese fado song. And it was Almodóvar’s answer to a question that had been with him for twenty years: what would Brokeback Mountain have looked like if he had directed it? He had been offered the film. He turned it down. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger made it instead. It became one of the most celebrated films of the decade. Almodóvar spent twenty years thinking about his version. Strange Way of Life is thirty minutes of that version.
“This is a queer Western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other. What it has that most Westerns don’t have is the kind of dialogue that I don’t think a Western film has ever captured between two men.” — Pedro Almodóvar
What the film actually is — and what happened at Cannes
Strange Way of Life follows SILVA — played by PEDRO PASCAL — a cowboy who rides across the desert to visit JAKE (Ethan Hawke), now the sheriff of a small Wild West town. They have not seen each other in twenty-five years. The reason for Silva’s visit is not simply to reminisce.
The film includes a flashback sequence where the nature of their relationship is made explicit — and a morning-after scene in which Pedro Pascal’s bare back is visible as he lies face down in bed. The image became one of the most widely circulated photographs from Cannes that year.
At the Cannes Q&A, Almodóvar was asked about the film’s relationship to other queer Westerns — specifically The Power of the Dog. He paused. Then said: “They didn’t f***.” The room erupted. The line was reported across every film outlet on the planet within the hour.
What Ethan Hawke said about his “very attractive” co-star
Toward the end of the Q&A, Hawke was asked what it was like to play lovers with Pedro Pascal. His answer was delivered with characteristic ease — and then, abruptly, extremely direct.
“I like to be wanted. I don’t care. If it happens to be a very attractive, extremely talented man — all the better.”
The quote was immediately shared everywhere. Pedro Pascal was not at Cannes when Hawke said it. He was in Morocco with Ridley Scott and a Roman army. His absence was noted and lamented. His name came up repeatedly anyway.
The Guardian called the film “compact, heady and beguiling.” Rolling Stone called it “a provocative movie that brings out the best in both of its leads.” Deadline praised Pascal and Hawke for “authenticity and a believable lived-in feel.” Pedro Pascal received some of the best reviews of his career for a film he could not attend the premiere of — because he was filming Gladiator II in Morocco.
The green jacket. The horse. The thirty minutes that left everyone wanting more.
SILVA arrives in a bold green jacket, riding across the desert on horseback — an image used in every piece of promotional material and one of the defining images of Pedro Pascal’s 2023. The film is nine minutes short of Oscar Best Picture eligibility. Almost every review called this a genuine loss. Audiences left wanting thirty more minutes of Silva and Jake in that desert.
PEDRO PASCAL plays a man who rode across a desert for love after twenty-five years of silence. Who showed up without announcement, without guarantee. Who arrived because not arriving was simply not something he could live with. It is, when you think about it, a very Pedro Pascal role. And Ethan Hawke, at Cannes, said what everyone was already thinking.
“They didn’t f***.” — Pedro Almodóvar, Cannes 2023. The most Almodóvar sentence imaginable. The line that broke the internet. And the reason Strange Way of Life is different from everything that came before it.
