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The Mississippi Mermaid review Almodovar's TALK TO HER!!!
Harry here, once... not long ago, I received a cel phone call from a person at SONY CLASSICS that said he was going to be screening this for me in Austin soon. (tap tap tap) (twidling my thumbs) AHEM... Here's a wonderful review from the Mississippi Mermaid, and man does it sound like another great film from Almodovar.... Here you go!
« Talk to Her »
a film by Pedro Almodovar
I just saw this movie (in Spanish - a language I don't
speak) with French subtitles (a language I do speak).
I haven't seen any reviews of this up, and don't know
if you're interested or not. But if ever.. here goes.
I'll preface this by saying I'm not all that familiar
with Almodovar's work. I did love « All About my
Mother » and « Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown ».
« Talk to Her » is sedate (by Almodovar's standards).
The raucous surrealism of some of his past work is
missing here (with the exception of a
«movie-within-the-movie » that foreshadows the main
plot twist which I won't reveal). But he is still
pushing the envelope in a big way. He reminds me of
the comment made in a play by a Tennessee Williams
character: "nothing that is human repulses me, only
unkindness does" or words to that effect.
The story concerns two men who are in love with two
comatose women. Sounds sedate, huh ? It isn't
though. The movie deals with obsessive love, but not
in a (politically correct) negative light. If there
is a man (gay or straight) alive who loves women,
their bodies, their conversation more than Almodovar,
I've never seen his movie. The two men (one a
journalist, the other a nurse in a hospital which
cares for the long-term comatose) meet when the
journalist's toreador girlfriend is gored in the
bullring and remains in a coma. The nurse tells the
broken-hearted journalist not to despair : « talk to
her ».
The two men become friends. The nurse, Benigno, spends
his days and nights tending a lovely young ballerina
Alicia. The girl has been comatose for years
following a traffic accident. But it isn't a
coincidence that Benigno has become her care-giver.
Before her accident, he lived across the street from
the ballet school where the girl trained and where the
lonely Benigno would spend hours watching her dance
through the windows facing his apartment. Benigno is
sexually ambiguous, a self-confessed virgin who spent
most of his childhood and youth caring for an ailing
mother. After his mother's death and Alicia's
accident, he follows his heart to devote himself
entirely to keeping the girl from slipping away, to «
talking to her ». He dresses her up, cuts her hair,
bathes her and talks about everything he has seen,
done, heard, thought, felt. She becomes the
unconscious repository of his hopes and dreams.
Almodovar's sly humor is still in evidence. One
wisecrack about the sexual proclivities of priests
gets a bigger laugh these days than he probably
intended when it was filmed. Alicia's psychiatrist
father (embarrassed by Benigno's physical contact with
his daughter) asks him « what his sexual orientation
is ». The nurse repeats the story to colleagues « he
asked me what my 'sexual orientation was', you know
sort of American for « are you a fag ? »). But
Almodovar is less interested in making the audience
laugh than in making them feel how magical it is to
love someone, how desperate it is to lose them, how
artificial society's taboos can seem when you are
blinded by devotion. His film is about love and the
boundaries it won't respect, about how redemption can
be found in the strangest places. To get there, he
tips his hat at Charlie Chaplin's « Limelight », at «
That Obscure Object of Desire », « The Collector »
even at « Weekend at Bernie's ».
Yet he makes a film that is wholly his own, tending
his actors and his story as lovingly and devotedly as
Benigno does his Alicia.
Yours,
the "Mississippi Mermaid"
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+ Expand All
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It's taken the man 20 years to be apreciated in both his country and the outside world :P.
Someone give this man an European project. -
I sent the review for Latin AICN about two weeks ago, and hasn't published yet (don't know why... Harry: what's up?).
Maybe I raved it too much and they think I am Almod -
While in Valencia I too saw Almodovar's Hable Con Ella . It's neither as surreal nor as emotionally charged as Todo Sobre Mi Madre (1999) but has a greater sense of playfulness, energy and cogency. The story (really a situational framework onto which Almodovar staples his characters) centers around the parallel stories of Marco and Benigno, two men in love with comatose women. Marco, as the Spanish equivalent of the Coens' Ed Crane, spends most of the film pining for his bullfighter girlfriend Lidia and reacting to immediate stimuli, assumably as foil to the more complex narrative of Benigno/Alicia. While the Marco/Lydia affair is conducted in a primarily linear fashion, the depiction of the Benigno/Alicia relationship unfolds in a typically Almodovarian inversion of time. The virginal and possibly homosexual Benigno, (played perfectly by the flamboyant Javier C
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of having seen LIVE FLESH and ALL ABOUT MT MOTHER. After fist viewing Live flesh, my response was along the lines of "uhhhh, is that it?". Everything seemed very unoriginal and I didnt understand some of the decisions made by the characters. However I loved All About.., so maybe I just didn't "get" live flesh. I'll be keeping an eye on Talk To Her, but what's up with Penelope Cruz getting pregnant then dying in all of Almodovar's films (well the two I've seen).
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...so what!!???!! They're still great films, in my opinion. You go in knowing that you're in one of their films but it's the execution in great dialogue/acting/visuals/emotion and the wonderful mastery of the director's style that makes almost every film of theirs a gem.
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Sorry but I do not agree with these reviews at all.. I think the problem with Talk to Her is that it does not have the cogency or energy that All About had. I did not get emotionally involved with the characters and therefore the story which could have been strongly emotional becomes a big joke.
He abandons one of the most interesting characters (the bullfighter) and gives the character almost no development; a shame as this story could be very involving.
Also, some of his usual gimmicks and standard characters simply don't blend in with the story and loose the humour they usually have.
In general I would say this is his most pretentious movie; he is trying to evolve but hasn't found his timing or mark in this one. -
very funny and punk, some kind of spanish John Waters, If you can, you should see Pepi, Lucy, Boom y Otras Chicas del Mont
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How can you review a movie where dialogue plays such a big part when you can't understand a word that is said or written on the screen? Does this place have any standards left for reviewers?
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