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Talk to Her (Hable con Ella) | Year: 2002 Classification: Foreign Film - Spanish/Misc Sa Directed: - Pedro Almodóvar Actors/Actresses: - Javier Cámara - Darío Grandinetti - Rosario Flores Ballerina & Male Nurse, Female Matador & Writer & Silence Another in a long line of outstanding Almodovar movies this flick does not dissapoint fans of his outlandish look at life. There are plenty of plot analysis reviews, controversy and interpretations so look around for the "right" one. What would a Almodovar movie be without ruffling a few feathers? The essence of the movie involves the lives of four people, two couples in love(one in a bizarre one way romance) where there are two women who end up in comas. It is a well done movie. There is a movie within a movie that is excellent, done in black and white in old silent movie style. The set designs in the black and while silent are magnificent and reveal a tragic love story where the "little man" (he takes a potion) makes the ultimate sacrifice to prove his love. This sequence is in itself worth viewing the movie. Besides the cinema itself the added features to the DVD are super. I thoroughly enjoyed Pedro Almodovar and Geraldine Chaplin as they discussed the whole movie as it plays without dialogue, explaining details and revealing unnoticed situations that may have been missed by just watching the movie. Their excitement over the results of their labor are infectous. Whatever you do watch the directors commentary version AFTER you have viewed it once. The performance by Caetano Veloso is outstanding as he sings an incredible version of "CuCu RuCu Cu Paloma " and is so good you'll be tempted to buy the soundtrack. Almodovar admits in the discussion of the film that he is not the same director from the 80's or 90's so if you are expecting the old Almodovar he has moved on. He has evolved and matured but continues to push peoples buttons in even more provocative ways. So is the movie funny like some of the older movies? Yes and no, there are moments where the ridiculous though somber scenes hit on both sides of the pendulum. The acting by the cast is very, very good, especially Beningo the male nurse who is a sordid character. His transformation from being an effeminate male nurse to a "tougher" type in prison is a thing of beauty; it is like two different people. You will ultimately be the judge of this movie but if you like Almodovar more than likely you will enjoy this movie where everything comes together for your viewing pleasure. For once, Almodovar misses--and he REALLY misses I love lots of movies that other people hate. Cheesy action films and stuff like that. But every so often, I find myself disliking a movie everyone else says is brilliant. This is one of those times. I love Almodovar, really I do. And I tried, oh how I tried to like this movie. It's visually stunning, after all, and wonderfully acted. And it is an atrocity. Apparently most of my 40 fellow reviewers have no real problem with the fact that one of the male protagonists of this film, a man portrayed sympathetically as someone capable of great love and tenderness, nevertheless [attacks] the woman he "loves" while she is in a coma. By itself, this wouldn't make a bad movie. What's bad is that Almodovar seems to REALLY WANT US TO BELIEVE that the [attack] is not an immoral act, that somehow the situation presented is beyond good and evil. Guess what? It's not. The film's visual and narrative focus totally disempowers the female characters of the film--and not just because two of them are in comas. There's nothing TO the women in this movie. They're just objects, landscapes, tools, for men to use in order to find out just how sensitive they can be and how much love they can have. No thanks. Not interested. I'm all for movies that force us into uncomfortable identifications with unusual protagonists, but there's a way to do this without making us complicit with the protagonist (Fight Club, for instance). Instead of offering some perspective, Talk to Her visually rapes a female character and then tries to convince us that something beautiful has happened. What really disturbs me, though, is my fellow 40 reviewers. How exactly do the males among those reviewers look at women? And how do the women among those reviewers look at themselves? Maybe this time I'm just wrong. But so far, no matter how hard I have tried, I have been unable to convince myself that anything beatiful happened in this movie. And the movie seems to think the opposite. And that, my friends, is very, very disturbing. A compelling and tragic masterpiece "Hable con Ella", as they say in Spain, follows the tragic paths of four people: Marco and Benigno, Lydia and Alicia. Marco falls in love with Lydia, a female bullfighter, who is gored by a bull. Benigno becomes obsessed with a dancer, Alicia, whom he can see from his apartment window practising in a studio. A car knocks Alicia down and Benigno becomes her nurse. Both women slip into a coma and it is in the hospital that the two men meet. Without giving too much of the plot away, they both lose the woman in their lives, but they find friendship with one another. This is the bare bones of the story. As with most of Almodovar's films, there are subtle depths that require repeated viewing to appreciate them fully. Almodavar deftly weaves the separate strands of the complex relationship of the four leading characters into a tightly focused and compelling piece of story-telling. Sad and uplifting, ironic and sympathetic, touching and unsentimental, this is a wonderful film. The acting is first-rate; Alberto Iglesias' score is enchanting, and Javier Aguirresarobe's cinematography is easy on the eye. Ballerina & Male Nurse, Female Matador & Writer & Silence Another in a long line of outstanding Almodovar movies this flick does not dissapoint fans of his outlandish look at life. There are plenty of plot analysis reviews, controversy and interpretations so look around for the "right" one. What would a Almodovar movie be without ruffling a few feathers? The essence of the movie involves the lives of four people, two couples in love(one in a bizarre one way romance) where there are two women who end up in comas. It is a well done movie. There is a movie within a movie that is excellent, done in black and white in old silent movie style. The set designs in the black and while silent are magnificent and reveal a tragic love story where the "little man" (he takes a potion) makes the ultimate sacrifice to prove his love. This sequence is in itself worth viewing the movie. Besides the cinema itself the added features to the DVD are super. I thoroughly enjoyed Pedro Almodovar and Geraldine Chaplin as they discussed the whole movie as it plays without dialogue, explaining details and revealing unnoticed situations that may have been missed by just watching the movie. Their excitement over the results of their labor are infectous. Whatever you do watch the directors commentary version AFTER you have viewed it once. The performance by Caetano Veloso is outstanding as he sings an incredible version of "CuCu RuCu Cu Paloma " and is so good you'll be tempted to buy the soundtrack. Almodovar admits in the discussion of the film that he is not the same director from the 80's or 90's so if you are expecting the old Almodovar he has moved on. He has evolved and matured but continues to push peoples buttons in even more provocative ways. So is the movie funny like some of the older movies? Yes and no, there are moments where the ridiculous though somber scenes hit on both sides of the pendulum. The acting by the cast is very, very good, especially Beningo the male nurse who is a sordid character. His transformation from being an effeminate male nurse to a "tougher" type in prison is a thing of beauty; it is like two different people. You will ultimately be the judge of this movie but if you like Almodovar more than likely you will enjoy this movie where everything comes together for your viewing pleasure. Buy Talk To Her at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  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