New-ish Releases: Julieta (2016); The Red Turtle (2016)

Julieta (2016)

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Another excellent movie by Almodovar, if not one that bears all the familiar tones of the living directing legend's many other brilliant films.

Based on a trio of short stories by Alice Munroe, Julieta follows the titular protagonist over the course of a couple of decades, during which she experiences euphoria, depression, and many of the emotions in between. The tale is told in flashback, beginning with a middle-aged Julieta (Emma Suarez) unexpectedly running into an old friend of her estranged daughter's. This sends her mind reeling into the past, when she was a young woman (Adriana Ugarte) just getting into teaching. She randomly meets and has an affair with Xoan - a charming, attractive fisherman from a small coastal town. Despite some markedly peculiar circumstances, she ends up living with him and having his baby, whom they name Antia. Julieta's relationship with Xoan and Antia become troubling due to an affiar and an unexpected death, both of which send Julieta into a deep depression that takes many years to completely manifest and recover from.

Julieta is, as you might imagine from my description, far from a joyous affair. While there are some moments of levity and amusement, one of this movie's grand themes is the grievous impact that personal relationship failings can have. It deals with passion, lust, platonic love, dedication, betrayal, and a host of other emotions that are unlikely to leave one slapping their knees in amusement. All the same, it is a rather compelling movie. As with the many other Almodovar films I've seen, the man is incredibly deft at telling emotional stories that can have considerable impact without the proceedings becoming quagmires of darkness and depression. However, this movie does have a somewhat different feel than the other more recent Almodovar movies I've seen. Perhaps it is because it is an adaptation of another's writing - in this case, the much-lauded Alice Walker - but the playful vibrancy found in even Almodovar's most challenging and controversial movies is often absent. This isn't really a problem, but it is an observation one cannot help but make after seeing many of the director's other distinctive movies.

It's an excellent drama, to be sure. While I am not one who goes out of his way to watch deeply emotional movies about mothers attempting to reckon with damaged relationships with daughters, it was easy to see the mastery of this movie. Like nearly all Almodovar movies, it does not offer pat resolutions or "messages," but rather tells a story of troubled relationships and how people attempt to deal with them. It may not be one that I ever need to watch again, but discriminating movie-goers are likely to appreciate how well-crafted and well-acted this movie is.


The Red Turtle (2016)

Director: Michael Dudok de Wit

A moving, melancholy animated tale that can serve as a metaphor for life, or can just be enjoyed as a stirring mythological story. A well-deserved nominee for the Academy Awards' Best Animated Feature from 2016, and one that wrung more than a few tears from me and my wife.

Much of the movie's power comes from not knowing what will happen; with that in mind, I'll limit this synopsis to the beginning portions. It begins with a man lost at sea in a small boat, crashing into a tropical island. He spends time figuring out what resources he has to survive, and attempting to built a rudimentary sea craft to escape. However, even when he does put together seaworthy, if simple, vessels, they get inexplicably destroyed by some underwater force ramming into them. This turns out to be the titular red turtle, and the turtle's nature becomes the focal point of the rest of the story.

The Red Turtle is very much a mythical tale. The time period is all but indeterminable, the characters have no names, and the island on which the entire story unfolds is never given a specific location or name. What's more, there is virtually no dialogue beyond the man yelling a barely articulate "Hey!" a handful of times. When topped off with the fact that the main characters' physical features could make them natives of any part of about half of the earth, then you get a story that is nearly as universal as such a story could be. This is no mean feat for even a short cinematic story, let alone a 90-minute feature film.

Much more than the universal nature of the characters and setting, though, are the actual story and deeper themes. Without giving anything away, this silent, sublime, and sometimes sad tale is all but guaranteed to wring a few tears out of you. This is not due to base sentimentality but rather the realities of simple but mature depictions of life, regret, love, sacrifice, and death. Though the story unfolds with very few characters, on a tiny island, and with only a handful of conflicts, each one achieves maximum impact thanks to the expert level of visual storytelling.

An adjective that comes to mind with this film is "confident." Film is, by nature, a medium that allows visual wizardry and dynamic action to mask a multitude of other narrative sins. It takes a very bold filmmaker to create a movie like The Red Turtle - quiet, subdued, and relatively simple. This makes it all the more impressive for the impact it ultimately has. It probably won't have you running back for repeat viewings over and over, but this is one of the most touching and memorable animated movies I've ever seen. 

Retro Trio: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976); Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989); Shotgun Stories (2007)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Director: Clint Eastwood

Still one of the all-time great Westerns, even if its flaws show a bit more, these forty years later.

One of Clint Eastwood's earlier directorial efforts, Josey Wales tells the story of the title character, a Missouri farmer whose wife and child are brutally butchered by a vicious platoon of "Redlegs" - a gang of Union mercenaries - during the United States Civil War. Wales takes up his gun, joins a Confederate militia, and starts fighting the Union with a bloody vengeance. His pain over his loss is so great that, even when the war ends, he refuses to surrender his guns or himself. Instead, he goes on the run, feeling that he cannot let the burden of his anger go. Although the traumatized and jaded Wales tries his best not to make any connections with other people, he can't seem to help slowly building a retinue of followers, all of whom he saves from one threat or another. Try as he might to suppress it, some small shred of humanity and empathy keeps breaking through and inspiring an odd loyalty from a motley crew of the disaffected.

While there may be a few warts that pop up here and there, this is still a titan of a Western - one which I would place among the top 3 all time. This is one of those great films that incorporates nearly everything that audiences enjoy about a particular genre of film, while turning many of its conventions on their heads. In the case of Josey Wales, we get the makings of a grand revenge tale, and even a satisfying exacting of that revenge. However, the unexpected portion is how Wales's revenge upon the Redlegs becomes secondary to his accidental rediscovery of his own humanity and desire to live. The first act of the movie follows fairly conventional lines - Wales is so consumed with rage over his wife and child's murders that he refuses to surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds of the Union army. It certainly seems easy to see where the tale will then go: Wales will outsmart and outgun his enemies until he gains satisfaction. Although he certianly does that, to an entertaining extent, it becomes secondary to the underlying struggle within him to find some reason to bother living. It was one of the few Westerns that touched on the true darkness and nihilism of pure vengeance, even when it may be righteous. This gives the story a much stiffer backbone than nearly all of its genre brethren.

Chief Dan George's performance as Watie is the standout
among several excellent supporting turns in this movie.
Wales's unique character is cast into greater light in the
presence of such centered companions.

But the film offers much more than cool gunfights and an existential struggle. The largest part of Wales's recovery of his soul is the oddball entourage which assembles around him. As he flees past Union forces towards Texas, he first encounters Lone Watie, an elderly Cherokee who seems to have given up most of his hope in life. Still, he maintains a bone dry sense of humor. When Wales doesn't kill him out of hand, Watie senses something honorable about the stoic gunman and decides to join him. Though Wales seems mildly annoyed by the native's company, he doesn't discourage it. Played brilliantly by Chief Dan George, Watie provides an amazing levity and heart to the film, while transcending and avoiding so many of the misrepresentations that Hollywood films constructed of Native Americans over the previous many decades. His lines, thanks in no small way to George's delivery, are just as funny and powerful now as they were 40 years ago.

And Watie is just the first of several characters through whom we sense the change in Wales. By the time he reaches Texas, Watie and George have also picked up a young Navajo woman, a cranky and tough old woman from Kansas, and her misty-eyed daughter. Though it is never stated in so many words, it is through this motley group that Wales finds a reason to live. And just when we are led to believe that we will witness a classic "cowboy versus Indian" showdown between Wales and the infamous war chief Ten Bears, the movie flips the script again and gives us an intense meeting which results in a truce between the two fierce warriors. Of course, we do get a larger-scale gunfight towards the end, but it is between Wales's new family and the vicious Redlegs who come after him. This provides a nice sense of classic revenge satisfaction, while righting some of the wrongs of so many past Westerns. Having a more diverse collection of  white people banded with a couple of Natives and fighting off an entire group of violent whites said something that no Western had completely tried to say before about cooperation and redemption.

As with nearly any movie, I can nitpick here and there, especially with movies that are four decades old. But I would rather limit this review to the many great things about this one. I think that, all told, Clint Eastwood has been major parts in all of the handful of transformative modern Westerns. Between playing Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" in the mid-'60s, to directing and starring in The Outlaw Josie Wales in 1976, and finally doing the same with Unforgiven, I have a difficult time imagining just how anyone could ever again be at the heart of revolutionizing such a prominent genre of film.


Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)

Original Spanish Title: Atame! 

Director: Pedro Almodovar

This seems to be the film where Almodovar started to tell stories that wandered a bit further into uncomfortable territory, while still maintaining a generally humorous tone.

The movie centers on Spanish movie actress Marina, a former porn actress who now stars in campy but more mainstream horror movies. Unbeknownst to Marina, a former one-night-stand of hers - Ricky (Antonio Banderas) - has just been released from a psychiatric hospital where he has been receiving therapy for stalking. Ricky is still obsessed with Marina, and he immediately kidnaps her in her own apartment, ties her up, and tries to convince her of his love and desire for them to be married and have a family. She is initially horrified by his bizarre obsession, but eventually comes to love his dedication.

This was the fifth Almodovar movie I've seen, but the only earlier one I'd seen was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. While that earlier movie was almost pure comedy, with a slight dash of darkness, Tie Me Up! seems to offer the most obvious clues as to the very uncomfortable places that many of Almodovar's movie would eventually go. While it is not nearly as challenging as Talk to Her, this one looks at obsession and desire in ways that viewers are likely to struggle with. Though many of the odd interactions between Ricky and the captive Marina can be humorous, there is a disturbing quality in how Marina eventually comes to love her captor. This, despite his physical and sometimes psychological abuse of her while he keeps her as his prisoner. One could argue that Ricky's dedication is some twisted form of true love, but it seems that an equally strong argument can be made for it being thoroughly selfish as well. Yet another notion is that both people are possessed of skewed and warped perceptions of what constitutes healthy relationships, and so are actually well-suited for each other. Such is the nature of Almodovar's movies: while they may follow familiar narrative frameworks, the characters operating within them are far from traditional ones. This is what makes them so unique and fascinating, if not exactly easy to watch at all times.

As with other Almodovar movies I've seen, it is impossible to guess exactly where the story will lead. Given how many films stick with conventional themes and storylines, it is amazing that one director and writer can continue to make compelling, challenging, and in many ways beautiful movies that stand apart from all others. This one is probably not the best "starter" movie for someone who hasn't seen any of Almodovar's movies before, but it will certainly please fans of his other movies.

Shotgun Stories (2007)

Director: Jeff Nichols

An amazing directorial debut that proves that strong drama is not only to be found in big budget movies set in large cities.

Shotgun Stories tells the tale of a small but nasty feud that breaks out between two sets of half-brothers in modern day Arkansas. One group, comprised of the three brothers Son (Michael Shannon), Boy, and Kid, are the trio abandoned by their abusive father so that he could start a new life and family. This father also changed his ways enough to become a decent parent to his two new sons - Cleaman and Mark - by his second wife. When their father dies, Son leads his younger brothers to the funeral, where he berates the dead man right in front of his second family. This sparks a feud between the sons that escalates in dangerous speed and intensity.

The movie is an expert blend of captivating character study, environment, and the theme of parents' sins living on in their children. The eldest brother Son is a stoic man who may not always have the best judgement, but who has a sense of guardianship over his brothers. None of the three is particularly successful at anything. In fact, they live in near-poverty, but they do all have an earnest desire to help and support each other. From Son's perspective, this means not allowing their abusive father to be buried before he voices his view that the man abandoned them and scarred them irrevocably. When this leads to serious conflict, Son and especially his youngest brother Kid are willing to fight for each other in every way possible. None of this ancient tribalism feels the least bit contrived, to the point that it is nestled right into the rural Arkansas landscapes and neighborhoods where the story takes place.

There is a very authentic quiet to many of the scenes that can vascillate between serene and terrible. This is a quality which I've found in other well done dramas done in the rural South, such as Badlands and others. It also helps punctuate the drama and emotion that breaks out when tensions run high and violence erupts. Several of these scenes, such as a fistfight at a carwash, would likely seem small-scale if it took place within a big budget film in a large city. In Shotgun Stories, though, it bears every inch of tension of a classic gunfight, but with the added layer of genuine emotion that is rarely found in mythical standoffs of the Wild West.

The dramatic turns in the movie feel completely organic, and the resolution is one that may surprise. To this point, now several weeks after I watched the movie, I am still mulling over just what the ending suggests. It is that atypical and thought-provoking. I highly recommend this one to those who enjoy small-scale, well-crafted drama. 

Retro Trio: High Heels (1991); Starred Up (2013); The Painted Veil (2006)

High Heels (1991)

Original Spanish Title: Tacones Lejanos

Director: Pedro Almodovar

This was the latest in my little trip through the films of renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. I found High Heels yet another early example of his unique voice and masterful skill as a film-maker.

The story focuses on Rebeca Giner (Victoria Abril), a young Spanish TV news anchor with some very complex, and occasionally lethal, ideas and relationships with men in her life. As a very young girl, Rebeca knowingly drugged her boorish step-father so that he would fall asleep at the wheel and die in an accident. Rather than being out of some mere urge to kill, her purpose was to free up her mother, Becky (Marisa Paredes), to take an acting job which her husband was preventing her from accepting. Oblivious to her daughter's hand in the death, Becky leaves her daughter behind and goes to Argentina to begin the acting career which is her dream.

A strange but amusing dance number thrown into the
proceedings ensures that we never take things too seriously,
even when things take a few rather dark turns.

Flash forward twenty years. Rebeca is a TV news anchor, and her mother has long since become a world-famous actress. Rebeca's mother returns to Madrid upon hearing that her daughter has married a former lover of hers, another rather loutish older man not unlike the father-in-law whom Rebeca drugged two decades earlier. When he is found dead several weeks after Becky's return, the mother and daughter become the prime suspects in an investigation headed by bloodhound judge Juez Dominguez (Miguel Bose). The associates of the two women include a colorful bunch, including several transvestites.

While the murder-mystery elements may, on the surface, make this seem like a fairly typical whodunit, this is an Almodovar movie. And being one of his earlier films, there is a range of humor, from virtual slapstick right through to the most pitch black, running through the proceedings. As with the other four films that I've seen of his, this one deals heavily with themes of personal identity and the feeling of loss and absence. Much of the movie can be very amusing, as there are more than a few absurd situations and interactions. But at the heart of it are universal emotions revolving around relationships between parents and children, spouses, and lovers. The movie bears many of the familiar hallmarks of the other Almodovar films I've seen, but once again is completely its own story.

Now having seen five of his movies, it seems to go without saying that the movie looks incredible. I've already described my impressions of the visuals in Almodovar's movies, so suffice it to write that High Heels is no different. This, in conjunction with all of the other merits of the film, simply solidify my admiration for the man as a film-maker. It's truly amazing stuff.

Starred Up (2013)

Director: David Mackenzie

I am now officially a fan of David Mackenzie. I watched Starred Up after seeing and loving Mackenzie's neo-Western film Hell or High Water. Based on that movie and this 2013 offering, I am willing to go see whatever his next few projects are, out of hand.

Starred Up is a prison drama focused on Eric Love, an extremely violent 19-year old convict who has aged out of the juvenile system and has been moved into an adult maximum security penitentiary. It also happens to be the very same prison which houses his convict father, Neville, who has been serving a life sentence since Eric was a small child. In less than a few hours after processing, Eric gets into a brutal fight with another inmate and in placed in solitary. Soon after release, he has another serious scrap with the guards. Just as the guards are ready to pummel him, though, a prison counselor sees all that is going on and taps Eric to take part in a discussion/therapy group which he runs. The guards reluctantly agree, and Eric is all but forced to attend the group.

The movie is an astounding, if highly disturbing, look at violence, masculinity, and how a young man grapples with trying to harness them to not just survive but also grow as a human. There are many extremely intense scenes, of both a physical and psychological nature. The young and hyper-pugnacious Eric is our fractured looking glass into the strict hierarchy of the lethally stratified federal prison system (the movie takes place in England, but it is easy to apply the environment to nearly any maximum security prison in the world). Watching Eric rein in his fury at his father and nearly everyone else around him in order to first survive and then to find some modicum of growth is as fascinating as it is disturbing. The setting and themes are not for the faint of heart, grim as they are, but there is real humanity sitting just beneath the surface of the entire movie.

The group therapy sessions are arguably the best scenes in
this great movie. You can almost see the waves of violent
aggression emanating from these guys, as well as their
immense struggle to deal with it all.

The acting is outstanding. The only actor whom I recognized was the incredible Sam Mendelson, who does a brilliant job as Eric's hard-as-nails father, Neville. All of the others, although not familiar to me, were amazing. Jack O'Connell is ferocious as Eric, and Rupert Friend is equally brilliant as the counselor Oliver Baumer. Not to be outdone are all of the men who are part of the therapy group. It is during these group meetings that we get some of the most powerful scenes. Some of these do not even involve words, but rather a palpable tension arising from extremely violent men wrestling with themselves and each other on a level that goes far beyond physical struggles.

Being a movie that was clearly going for an authenticity which few prison movies approach, Starred Up does not offer a rosy conclusion. It does, however, offer the satisfaction of having seen something that reveals some profound aspects of human nature, and it offers us all a hard look at what incarceration means. It is the type of movie that, even if I don't feel the need to see it again, I would recommend nearly everyone watch at least once.

The Painted Veil (2006)

Director: John Curran

The wife and I decided to go "full nerd" recently and read the same classic English novel before watching the film adaptation of it. The novel was The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham, an author whose other novels I've loved. My wife had seen the movie already, but I was coming at it from the novel first.

The movie stays true to most of the spirit of the novel, set in the 1920s, in which Kitty (Naomi Watts), a young socialite Englishwoman, marries Walter Fane (Ed Norton). Walter is a rather dry but civil bacteriologist who takes her to Hong Kong where he does research. Soon after their arrival, Kitty grows bored with her new husband and begins an affair with an attractive up-and-comer in the British colonial government. Walter discovers the affair just as he accepts an assignment to go to a cholera-ravaged area deeper into the Chinese countryside. Under threat of a messy and public divorce, Walter forces Kitty to accompany him. While terrified that her husband wishes her death from the cholera epidemic, Kitty sees no other option but to accept and go with him. Amid the cholera-infected area, Walter and Kitty find themselves among great suffering of the native population, and they meet several other Westerners who are there for their own reasons.

Kitty and Walter - two people who probably weren't right for
each other from the start, but whose shared struggles among
the cholera epidemic lead them to grow themselves and their
respect for each other.

This film adaptation hits nearly all of the strongest, most poignant notes of Maugham's brilliant novel. The relationship between Walter and Kitty grows increasingly deeper and more complex once they are among the cholera epidemic. And while lesser writers would have milked this situation for no end of sentimentality and trite reconciliations, Maugham was far too experienced and skilled an author to travel such beaten paths. When reading the novel, I was constantly surprised at how the story unfolded and how the characters developed. And the unexpected turns are not merely inserted for the sake of surprise. They feel quite organic, and they touch upon the messy nature of human desires and our ability to alter and expand our perspectives. The movie retains many of the novel's subtler turns of character, which only increases its value. To be sure, a few things are simplified and given slightly tidier resolutions, but this is to be expected from most commercially-minded films. In the case of this movie, they don't greatly diminish the overall tale.

Beyond the clear strengths of story and character, the movie is visually stunning. The cinematography captures the beauty of the Chinese countryside, as well as the exquisite beauty of the period's buildings and clothing. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh has plenty of dazzling movies and TV shows to his credit, and this one may be his crown jewel. An added technical merit is, unsurprisingly, that the acting is excellent. Naomi Watts and Ed Norton are typically great, as are all of the supporting cast.

I'd recommend this movie to nearly anyone, just as I'd recommend that anyone read the novel first. While readers who deeply love the novel may be a bit disappointed in what the film changes or omits, I don't feel that there are any crippling alterations or omissions. Both are first-rate pieces of art, and they make for great comparisons to each other. 

Before I Die #572: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

This is the 572nd movie I've seen from the 1,177 movies on the "Before You Die" list that I am gradually working through.

Original Spanish Title: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios

Director: Pedro Almodovar

This is the third Almodovar movie that I've watched, and I can see why some viewers tend to divide his movies into "early" and "late" periods. Women on the Verge is one of his earliest feature length movies, making it clear that he was always a film-maker with a clear vision and style, regardless of the themes and emotional tones in his stories.

In a brisk and fun 88 minutes, the movie depicts a strange and trying few days for Pepa, and actress whose married and philandering lover, Ivan, has left her for another woman. Pepa frantically tries to track down Ivan, seeking out his son and former wife, who are equally confused in their own ways. As the search continues, more people get involved, until the entire pursuit involves Pepa's anxious friend Candela, Muslim terrorists, a few police, a telephone repairman, and a few other peculiar characters thrown in.

From that short description, it shouldn't surprise you that the film has a clearly zany, comic tone. This makes it plenty of fun for its short running time. The humor nearly all revolves around the different characters coping with their romantic frustrations from unrequited or unrecognized affections. Much of the humor is sold through the excellent acting and matter-of-fact deliveries of the actors.

As with the other two Almodovar movies I've seen, the visuals are stunning. The camerawork and editing are masterful, and the sets and costumes are eye-popping in their vibrancy. And the sets are very clearly stage props, meant to drive home the point that we are in a completely fictional, almost cartoonish world. While such brightness can seem at odds with darker themes found in Almodovar movies such as Talk to Her, it fits perfectly with a more light-hearted film such as Women on the Verge. Put simply, it makes the movie eminently pleasant to watch.

I'm now completely on board Almodovar. Having seen one of his movies each from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, I think I can see the general shift in theme and presentation over the decades, and I am eager to take in as many of his other movies as I can. Fortunately, my Spanish-speaking wife is a fan who is of the same attitude, so this will be a set of films that I don't have to watch solo (just ask her about my Mad Max binge).

That's 572 movies down. Only 607 to go before I can die. 

Before I Die #571*: All About My Mother (1999)

This is the 571st movie I've watched of the 1,177 films on the "Before You Die" list that I'm gradually working my way through. *After another edit, I realized that Mad Max was actually the 570th movie that I'd seen. It's tough keeping up with all of these...

Original Spanish Title: Todo sobre mi madre

Director: Pedro Almodovar

This is the second of esteemed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's movie I've seen, with the first being Talk to Her. While I found that later movie bursting with film-making skill, I found one key part of the story rather difficult to stomach. All About My Mother, while certainly challenging certain notions about gender identity and relationships, was far easier to enjoy.

Since I feel that the magic of a movie such as this depends upon the its unexpected narrative turns, I will avoid too much detail, despite the film being 17 years old. The story focuses on Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse who endures a major life tragedy and finds herself leaving Madrid and returning to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her estranged and irresponsible ex-husband, while also being drawn to a theater troop who had an unwitting hand in her trauma. Manuela finds herself reconnecting with old acquaintances and befriending new and singular strangers as she copes with her grief. The people around her include a transgender prostitute, an aged lesbian actress in a troubled relationship with her young and drug-addicted co-star, a pregnant nun, and several other colorful characters. A more dynamic set of figures would be difficult to find, and what makes them fascinating goes well beyond the ways which they fall outside of mainstream ideas of identity.

Although there is a deep tragedy at the heart of the story, the general tone is relatively light-hearted and even a tad zany at times. The characters, while acting and speaking in ways which come to feel quite natural for each them, are often unpredictably funny and amusingly singular. Anyone who has spent a little time around artists can understand the extemporaneous and dramatic actions of several characters in the film, and when several of them share scenes together, the energy is palpable.

Nearly every scene bursts with color and careful arrangement, not unlike what
you might see in a Cohen brothers or Wes Anderson film.

While not one of his earliest films, All About My Mother was clearly one made on a relatively limited budget. Despite this, the visuals are stunning. The costumes and set designs are distinctive and vibrant, and the cinematography is masterful. These are traits which are even more obvious in the later Talk to Her, but I was drawn in by what seems to be an Almodovar staple of highly attractive visual style.

I don't know that All About My Mother is exactly for everyone. Those who like clear, logical storylines which follow traditional patterns regarding love and loss are bound to be confused at best and frustrated at worst. For my part, I found the movie to have its own clear, if quirky, sense of logic, to go along with its genuine heart and humor. I would gladly watch this one again, and I am now looking forward to watching more of Almodovar's films.

So that's now 571 films down; only 606 to go before I can die. 

Film #101: Talk to Her (2002)

Original Spanish Title: Hable con ella

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Initial Release Country: Spain

Times Previously Seen: none

Teaser Summary (No spoilers)

A pair of men with loved ones in comas bond. Strange and illegal relationships ensue. A massive vagina gets involved.

Extended Summary (Spoilers included. Fair warning.)

Marco (Dario Grandinetti), a journalist in Spain, tracks down the noted female bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) in order to do a story on her. When he meets and explains that he hopes to do the story about her recent breakup with a fellow matador, Lydia initially is upset. However, she changes her opinion, does the story with Marco, and the two become lovers for a time.

Lydia, the unlucky-in-love lady bullfighter who becomes romantic with the sensitive journalist, Marco.

Several months later, Lydia is horrifically injured by a bull and is sent into a coma. While visiting her in the coma ward, Marco meets Benigno (Javier Camara), a nurse who works in the coma ward with one specific patient – Alicia. Marco eventually learns that Benigno’s relationship is far from a simple nurse-patient one. Four years prior, just before Alicia became comatose, Benigno had been living a solitary life with only his mother. He had noticed Alicia in the dancing school across the street from his and his mother’s home, and he one day approached and introduced himself to to her. Not knowing how else to proceed, he even made an appointment with Lydia’s father, who is a psychiatrist.

Before things could go any further, however, Alicia was the victim of a car accident. Benigno, still smitten with the beautiful young dancer, applies to be a nurse in the coma ward where she is admitted. Benigno’s skill and sincerity in caring for Alicia impresses her father enough to hire Benigno as one of two nurses who will attend his daughter at all times. As the four years pass, Benigno continues to dedicate all of his love to Alicia, not only caring for all of her physical needs but also constantly talking to her as if she were perfectly conscious.

When Benigno meets Marco in the coma ward, he offers him some friendly advice about caring for Lydia. However, Marco soon learns that Lydia’s former lover has returned and that they had been back together for about a month before Lydia’s accident. Understandably saddened, Marco leaves the hospital. He runs into Benigno on his way out, and he learns an unsettling secret. Benigno tells Marco that he is so in love with Alicia that he hopes to marry her. Marco, thoroughly shocked, tries to explain how inappropriate Benigno’s notion is, given that Alicia is essentially dead. Benigno, though, seems undeterred.

Benigno "introduces" Alicia (left) to Marco and Lydia. The two men are both doomed to love women who are unable to return their deep feelings.

Soon at the hospital, things take a dark turn. It is discovered that Alicia is pregnant. Based on the circumstances and the fact that a fellow nurse had overheard Benigno’s plans to marry Alicia, Benigno is put into prison on the assumption that he has raped her. While this is occurring, Marco has been in Jordan for several months, writing a travel guide. While Marcos is there, he reads in a newspaper that Lydia has died. When he calls the hospital and asks for Benigno, he learns of the sordid story.

When he returns and visits Benigno in prison, it becomes fairly clear to Marco that Benigno is guilty. Still, he remains friends with the sensitive and horribly misguided nurse. Marco seems to empathize on some level with Benigno’s desire to know whether Alicia’s child is born or not. Marco even accepts Benigno’s offer to stay in his old apartment. While staying there, in fact, he sees Alicia, recovered from her coma. He learns later that she had given birth to a stillborn child, but then came out of her coma. When Marco sees her, she is still on crutches, rehabbing her atrophied muscles.

Marco initially decides not to tell Benigno of Alicia’s stunning recovery and the death of the child. This changes rapidly when Marco receives a phone message from Benigno in which the hopeless man announces that he will escape. Marco rushes to the hospital, only to find that Benigno has indeed “escaped” – he has overdosed on pills and killed himself.

Not long after these tragic events, Marco runs across Alicia at a dance performance. The two exchange a few words and glances, and there seems to be some sort of spark between them.

My Take on the Film

Talk about getting dropped off a cliff.

Talk to Her had me fully engaged for over half its length, and it was easy for me to see why this is considered a great film and why Almodovar is considered a great director. Yet there is a point in this movie at which all viewers will take one of two completely divergent emotional paths. I took the path that led to confusion and alienation from the film.

The seemingly kind and altruistic Benigno - the character who will force you to ask yourself some very serious and disturbing questions.

So what is this crucial moment? We’ll get to that, but let me cover what I really liked about the film, especially during the first hour or so.

The most immediate is the cinematography. The sets and costumes are wonderfully colorful, as is the general setting of Spain, the bullfighting scenes being the ones that immediately come to mind. The shots are wonderfully framed and things are edited in ways that make the visuals smooth and inviting. There is a general warmth exuded from the pictures, even when the characters are suffering through terrible bouts of loneliness or anguish.

The actual narrative itself is also masterfully composed. Despite the depth of the several characters and just how much we are given about them, nothing ever feels either rushed or stagnant. Every time a mysterious element emerges, the story addresses it somewhere further into the plot. This is always a welcome element in films, especially ones like this. I’ve seen far too many films that raise serious questions about the characters or plot that are never addressed, as if the director were either too lazy, too unimaginative, or too pretentious to resolve potential conflicts. Not so with this film.

One of the many visually and emotionally warm moments in the movie. Marco, Lydia, and all of the other characters manage to stoke viewers' feelings for them.

There is also a lot of emotional food for thought in the story. The running theme is finding and losing a person who you love, what it does to a person, and how you can overcome the pain involved. Done mostly through dialectic recollections and a few very brief visual flashbacks, we can sense the pain felt by the different characters as they struggle over past lovers.

The acting is absolutely superior. Each and every person nails their roles perfectly, even the rather difficult roles of Marco and Benigno. The latter, especially, is a character who will surely test the emotions of all viewers, and it had to be played in just a particular way. Javier Camara pulled it off remarkably.

So, these all seem to be the stuff of a hands-down excellent movie, right? Not so fast. Allow me to explain just when the train went off the tracks for me.

About an hour or so into the film, we have a scene with Marco and Benigno. Shortly after Marco learns that Lydia had been seeing her former lover before her accident, Benigno tells him an odd tale of a silent film that he had watched the night before. The film was about a man who had taken a “slimming” potion concocted by his scientist girlfriend. The man shrinks down to roughly six inches high, with no remedy in sight. One evening, while his wife is in bed, he begins to caress her sexually. He then enters her through her vagina, where he stays for the rest of his life.

To answer your question - Yes. This still photo depicts exactly what you think it does.

Now, that scene alone is going to make you ask some questions. It might even lead you to turn off the movie, completely baffled and/or disgusted. Though I was rather uncomfortable at the scene, I stuck with the movie to see where it went.

And then we learn that Benigno has raped the girl in a coma.

Good night, everyone.

I continued to watch the entire film because we do not really get full confirmation of the rape until close to the end, and by that time I was emotionally checked out. And before anyone thinks that I simply didn’t “get it,” I beg to differ. I do understand that Benigno represents some form of victim of the ultimate unrequited love. He felt that he himself had “shrunken” into nothingness like the man in the silent film, and he felt that the only way to prove his own existence was to lose himself in Alicia. After spending four years losing himself emotionally in her, he takes the most extreme next step possible – he loses himself physically by planting his seed in her and then killing himself.

I get all that, and I suppose that it does make for some interesting intellectual discussion. I also assume that Almodovar is asking us to realize that this is a film, and to see these all as fictional characters through which we can use highly unnerving situations to raise poignant questions. And despite knowing all of this, I simply can’t subdue my repugnance at the notion, even fictional, of raping someone in a coma. Call me overly sensitive, but that’s my ultimate impression.

Even after learning that Benigno has, in fact, raped Alicia, Marco continues to remain friends with the former nurse while he's in prison. I understand, intellectually, why this is. However, this was all just too much for me, morally.

For anyone who is thinking of watching the movie and has read through this review, just try to have some idea of what you’re in for. It will seem like a fairly standard drama most of the way, but you will be seriously challenged at the mid-way point. I can see why it is considered a “great” film, as its technical merits are irreproachable and it is unlike any film that I’ve ever seen. But there’s no reason for me to ever watch it again.

That’s a wrap. 101 shows down; 4 to go.

Coming Soon: City of God (2002):

I watched this one about eight years ago and remember thinking it was excellent. It’s been long enough now that I don’t really remember much about it. It’s also appropriate, what with the protests going on in Brazil right now. I’m looking forward to it.

Please be sure to pick up all empties on the way out.