Frank Vigorito
is a native New Yorker who managed to live in four of its five boroughs
before ditching it all for a house in rural Spain. While not reviewing
the newest films and toreadors, Frank enjoys whiling away the hours
working on his first novel. This review appeared in
Offoffoff.com.
The undisputed voice of
Spanish cinema for almost more than twenty years, writer and
director Pedro Almodovar's latest film Hable con Ella (Talk
to Her) is as much a must see as Women on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdownor and All About My Mother, not
only because of the tender, extraordinary human drama it recounts,
but also because it finds the master challenging himself, creating
a new cinematic vocabulary that touches the viewer as powerfully
as all the blood, guts and sex that has come before.
The first scene of
the film, a modern dance performance, is telling. In dance,
it is quickly apparent, Almodovar has learned to read and
express the hideous and blissful messages that the human body
communicates in movement. An older woman, seemingly blind,
agonizes and stumbles around a stage filled with wooden chairs.
A young man struggles to move the chairs out of harm's way
as she stumbles across the floor and falls, quite literally,
into despair. Upstage, a younger woman dressed similarly echoes
her movements in smaller, more subtle action.
The film is infused
with these scenes of human motion - the lethal dance of a
matador and a bull, the hands of a nurse sensuously massaging
the body of a beautiful young woman, the minuet of lava-lamp
globules breaking apart and ricocheting in a pool of oil.
Watching the drama unfold on stage are Marco and Benigno,
two men who will later careen and tumble emotionally across
the movie screen. That these men sit only inches apart, but
do not acknowledge each other, is as much a dance of characters
for Almodovar as the costumed
ballerinas on stage.
The majority of the
film takes place in The Forest, an aptly named clinic for
patients who suffer from comas, trapped in a state of unreality
that recalls the dreamy nighttime woods of Shakespeare. Marco
(Dario Grandinetti) and Benigno (Javier Camara) are waiting
at the clinic for their loved ones to return to the sun-drenched
world of the living. Marco is the most newly arrived, his
toreador girlfriend having been gored in the ring - their
history together has been brief and he's uncomfortable amidst
former lovers and hysterical relatives.
He finds refuge with
Benigno, a nurse at The Forest whose only charge is a beautiful
young dancer whom he had developed a crush on before her accident.
While able to converse freely with one another, the men are
plagued by what they never said to their respective loves.
Benigno had innocently stalked Alicia (Leonor Watling) over
the course of two weeks, only to find her one day as his new
patient at the clinic. Marco, a writer, spent too much of
his brief time with Lydia (Rosario Flores) talking, as writers
do, and not listening.
The story follows
the suffering of these two unrequited lovers using a series
of flashbacks to tell each of their individual stories. The
deliberately time-stamped sections are a new narrative tool
for Almodovar, who typically has left things up to his audience
to figure out. The sequencing gives the impression of jumping
forward only to cut back twice - not in a disjointed, Tarantino-esque
fashion, but in a manner that allows each story and relationship
to develop, building slowly and fleshing out the complexities
of the men who remember.
Benigno's constant
care and affection for Alicia is a bit eccentric, but his
attitude is what one would hope for from a good nurse - he
truly believes that Alicia, and perhaps all the patients,
will one day miraculously awaken. As a veteran of the coma
ward, he advises Marco to talk to his girlfriend in a coma,
"talk to her." Marco's frustrated response, "She's
brain dead," only elicits the glib, yet nuanced Almodovarism,
"Yes, but women are complicated." Benigno's naive
hope is ultimately his downfall, but in a turn, it is also
Marco's salvation when the two forge an unlikely, lasting
friendship of the type that can only emerge from communal
suffering. When Marco finally does take Benigno's piece of
advice in the final scene of the film, there's a calm, a peace
that he seems to find; to whom he does the talking is Almodovar's
best-kept secret.
Since 1997's Live
Flesh, Almodovar's films have been maturing thematically
as well as narratively. After exploring the visceral and abject
in films like Matador, Tie Me Up Tie me Down and
Kika, he's shown more interest lately in the subtlety
of the human condition: growth and enlightenment, often born
of pain. He no longer needs to color the screen with blood,
guts and violent sex. Where once there might have been a disturbing
scene of sexual aggression (think Kika), there are
now intimations of action off screen, or equally effective,
high camp.
The two Almodovars
come into stark relief by way of an original silent film that
punctuates the narrative of "Talk to Her." The exquisitely
executed short The Shrinking Lover (think Bela Lugosi's
Dracula) is a technical gem, but more importantly it
serves as a comic venue where Almodovar can bare his teeth.
The bratty, vulgar sex-fiend Almodovar returns and lets fly
with a scene of intercourse only he is capable of delivering:
a shrunken man, a six-foot tall vagina, and an all-consuming
lust. It's a good laugh for the audience, but the consequences
for the intended audience of this film within the film, Benigno,
are ironically quite confusing and tragic.
Talk to Her
is full of surprises like these - for Almodovar veterans and
newcomers - not only in its slowly unfolding plot, but also
in the new an inventive way Almodovar has found to tell his
story. With a filmography that reads like El Quixote,
it's no wonder Almodovar has begun to interest himself in
not only what story to tell, but how to tell it. Given a tough
assignment to follow the success of All About My Mother,
Talk to Her proves once again that Almodovar is at the
top of his game and truly one of the world's best, most original
filmmakers.
