“Broken Embraces” is a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath. As it ravished me, I longed for a freeze frame to allow me to savor a shot (…) Penelope Cruz has been Almodovar’s constant muse since “Live Flesh” (1997). Never has she been more clearly the brush he uses, the canvas he covers, and the subject of his painting. — Roger Ebert, 2009.