Pedro Almodóvar's Queer Cowboy Short Starring Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke to Open Cannes

Openly gay Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar chatted a little with Dua Lipa about his upcoming film "A Strange Way of Life," which the director said is a "queer western" that he didn't "want to classify."

Collider reported that Almodóvar, during an appearance on the "Dua Lipa: At Your Service" podcast, told the Albanian-English singer/songwriter that he would say a little about the film because he's a fan of hers.

Almodóvar's translator told the recording artist that the filmmaker was "not allowed to say a lot about the western but he's going to say something because you are Dua Lipa and he loves you."

Then Almodóvar himself spoke up about the movie, saying that "it's a Western, it's about masculinity, but I don't want to classify it, but I don't know exactly what the people are going to say about the western."

"This is a queer western," Almodóvar went on to say, "in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way. It's about masculinity in that deep sense."

Collider recalled that "Strange Way of Life," which is a short film, "has had its own comparisons to films like 'Brokeback Mountain' because of Almodóvar's own comments on the film," and that it "will center a love story between two men."

But will the "love story" be one of fraternal, platonic ties? Or something more queer in the sense of being erotic? The filmmaker was coy when it came to exactly what he meant.

"It will release in May," Almodóvar said, "it will open in Cannes Film Festival and then we have to wait until that moment" to know more.

The translator offered a handful of equally ambiguous clues, telling Dua Lipa that the movie "has a lot of elements of the western, it has gunslingers, it has the ranch, it has the sheriff. It has the town, it has the showdown, but 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."

Adding to the intrigue is the casting of Ethan Hawke and "The Last of Us" star Pedro Pascal, who has been tight-lipped about his own sexuality but who has proven to be a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community. The "queer love story" takes place between their characters.

Variety recounted that the film deals with Pedro Pascal's character, Silva, reuniting with an old friend, Sheriff Jake, played by Hawke.

"Twenty-five years earlier, the two men worked together as hired gunmen," Variety said, but it turns out that "the real reason for his visit isn't memories of their old friendship."

Last June, Almodóvar let a little more slip about the movie, telling Entertainment Weekly that "There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate."

That comment, too, is open to interpretation at this point – but Almodóvar might have given a clue to the new flick when he told IndieWire last summer that he did not take on directing "Brokeback Mountain" because he didn't think he'd be allowed to tell the story the way he wanted.

"The relation between these two guys is animalistic," Almodóvar explained, referring to the characters played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in the 2005 Ang Lee drama, going on to add that, "for me it was impossible to have that in the movie because it was a Hollywood movie. You could not have these two guys fucking all the time."

"Strange Way of Life" also stars 23-year-old Spanish actor Manu Ríos, who, as previously reported, has already found a measure of fame for his role in the Netflix series "Elite." Exactly how his character figures into the story remains to be discovered.