Is it really so strange? Strange Way of Life and the late western

This article explores how Strange Way of Life (Almodóvar 2023), as a short-form western, embodies Theodor Adorno’s and Edward Said’s notions of late style. Characterized by abstraction, irresolution and introspection, the film queers the western’s traditional tropes, challenging its heteronormative conventions by centring the intimate, fractured relationship between two middle-aged men. By leveraging the short film’s narrative economy and the genre’s iconic visual language, Almodóvar interrogates masculinity, vulnerability and the repressed emotional currents beneath the genre’s surface. Situating the film within Almodóvar’s auteurist trajectory, the analysis examines his reframing of identity and desire in the twilight of his career. The film’s unresolved longing and melancholic tone transform the western into an elegiac meditation on intimacy, identity and the possibilities of reimagining genre and cultural legacy.