Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 34, Ed. 1 Friday, December 20, 2002 Page: 38 of 72
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m
Talk isn't cheap
Almodovar speaks volumes in cinematic beauty
pilplPf
Lydia (Rosario Flores) prepares to enter a dangerous bullfighting ring in
Talk to Her.
By Steve Warren
Contributing Film Critic
Pedro Almodovar explores uncharted
regions of the human mind and heart in Talk to
Her (Hable con Ella). The writer-director seems
to get better with every film, and this one
ranks among his best. It's a melodrama with a
few kinks, yes, but it's also a pihata filled with
entertainment.
During MGM's golden age, they would
often spice up a film by interrupting the story
for a concert or nightclub performance, a
dance number or a fashion show. Almodovar
opens and closes with Pina Bausch ballets.
Somewhere in the middle Caetano Veloso
sings a song and there's a newly-created silent
movie, Shrinking Lover, which seems to be
another diversion but later proves essential to
the plot.
At the first ballet, two strangers are seated
next to each other. They don't speak but
Benigno (Javier Camara) notices that the dance
makes Marco (Dario Grandinetti) cry. They
will meet several months later (the film jumps
around in time a lot but not confusingly) at the
private hospital where Benigno works as a
nurse assigned exclusively to Alicia (Leonor
Watling), who has been in a coma for four
years.
What brings Marco to the hospital is that
Lydia (Rosario Flores), the bullfighter he's
been seeing, has been gored by a bull and is
also in what the doctors call a "PVS —
Persistent Vegetative State," from which she
may never emerge.
Marco is not as adept as Benigno at engag-
ing in one-sided dialogues with the comatose.
Benigno tells Alicia about everything he does
— which isn't much because he has no life out-
side the hospital and frequently works double
shifts. When he sees a movie, he describes it to
her in detail — not unlike Molina in Kiss of the
Spider Woman.
The backstory is brought out in both con-
versations and flashbacks. Before the accident
that brought Alicia to the hospital, Benigno
had virtually been stalking her, having first
seen her from his window studying dance at
Katerina's (Geraldine Chaplin) academy
across the street. In hopes of meeting her he
booked a session with her father, a psychia-
trist, who questioned the sexual orientation of
what was then a 25-year-old virgin.
Until shortly before that Benigno had
devoted his life to caring for his mother, who
never left their apartment, even before she got
sick. For her sake he had studied nursing, hair-
dressing and other skills he could use in her
service. If he isn't gay he should be. Even
Marco recoils briefly at their first meeting,
thinking Benigno is hitting on him.
Marco is a writer who had volunteered to
interview Lydia for a newspaper after seeing
her walk out on a bitchy, prying TV host. At
the time she was going through an ugly
breakup with another matador, known as El
Nino. She refused to be interviewed by Marco
but events conspired to keep them together
long enough that they wanted to spend still
more time together.
The story continues with a combination of
events that are expected and some that are
total surprises. Katerina speaks the truth in the
film's last words: "Nothing is simple. I'm a
ballet mistress, and nothing is simple."
Almodovar's style too becomes ever more
complex. He creates visual poetry from mun-
dane hospital procedures and delights in find-
ing ways of stretching bodies across the full
width of the screen. Trust me, you don't want
to see a pan-and-scan version.
Like the Shrinking Lover interlude — and
how ironic that a woman in a coma should
have been fond of silent films — Talk to Her is
often funny and touching at the same time.
Almodovar has the same influences as
Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven) and Francois
Ozon (8 Women), but he uses them to move cin-
ema into the future rather than the past. Talk to
Her is the next step in the evolution of the
melodrama. Not that there's anything wrong
with either approach when these three gay
men from different countries have used them
to create three of the year's best films. T
Opens Dec. 25 exclusively at Landmark's
Inwood Theatre.
Talk to Her
★★★ (out of four)
Starring Rosario Flores, Javier Camara and
Dario Grandinetti
Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar
DECEMBER 20, 2002 DALLAS VOICE
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 34, Ed. 1 Friday, December 20, 2002, newspaper, December 20, 2002; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth616282/m1/38/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.