There is a certain level of idealism inherent in every romantic relationship. We cannot know everything about the one we love, so we form an image of them in our mind, which we hold with us when they are away, or even when we’re together and reality isn’t quite enough for us. It is, however given to some men (and some women as well) to idealize the ones they love all out of proportion, to the point where most of what they have their image of the ones they care about, and they must project the rest. Consider people who enter into online romantic relationships, or a more extreme example, those who worship celebrities.
Or consider Benigno (Javier Camara), one of the main characters of Pedro Almodovar’s new film TALK TO HER. A nurse, he has attended to the comatose Alicia (Leonor Watling) for four years, massaging her muscles, changing her clothes, and bathing her as is his job, but also forming a sort of relationship with her, in his mind anyway. He only met her a few times before she fell into her coma, but this doesn’t deter him. “We get along better than most regular couples,” he tells a friend.
Of course, this isn’t a healthy relationship, as it’s completely one-sided. He has devoted himself to a someone who doesn’t recognize his presence, and barely knew him even when she was healthy. All he has is his idealism, and while that seems to be enough for him doesn’t constitute a real and lasting relationship, which only comes from getting past the idealism and loving everything about a woman, including her snoring or the way she has to get up to use the ladies’ room four times during a movie. Still, it’s clear that Benigno is a very shy and lonely man, and after caring for his beloved mother most of his life stunted his social development, caring for someone goes hand in hand with love in his mind.
Benigno’s story is contrasted with Marco (Dario Grandinetti), a man whose bullfighter girlfriend Lydia (Rosario Flores) was gored in the ring, and who can’t devote himself to her as Benigno does to Alicia. Benigno sort of takes Marco under his wing, giving him advice to help him through his difficult times. “Talk to her,” Benigno says, and this is similar to what they teach in CPR classes about reassuring someone on whom you’re administering CPR, not only because it’s believed by some that hearing is one of the last senses to be lost, but also because it helps to calm down the person giving CPR and those around him or her. Eventually, the two men are wheeling their comatose charges out onto the patio and reading to them, and they form a strange kind of friendship.
Too few films deal with deep friendship between men, because it’s believed by many to be un-masculine (read: homosexual). This one is more complex than most you’ll see onscreen, and while Benigno at one point tells a psychiatrist that he prefers men, he seems more asexual than anything. Marco is more conventionally “manly”, but he sometimes cries as well (as he does in the scene where Benigno first sees him at a Pina Bausch dance performance), and I got the impression that Marco was drawn to Benigno as a friend because Benigno brought out Marco’s sensitive side. Near the end of the film, Benigno calls Marco his “boyfriend” and it feels less like a sexual label than one of closeness, much like some women call each other “girlfriend.”
I haven’t seen a lot of Almodovar’s early work, but his WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN was outlandish stylistically and unpredictable story-wise. While TALK TO HER is more serious in tone (more like his last film, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) it also finds space in the story for stranger flourishes, most memorably a bizarre silent-film centerpiece. While it’s very funny and bizarre as a stand-alone sequence, it’s also of a piece with the rest of the story and even foreshadows a key event in the film’s second hour.
Other narrative asides aren’t as integral to the main story, but are nonetheless indelible and key to our experience of the film. There’s a gorgeous interlude at a party featuring Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso’s rendition of the song “Cucurrucucu Paloma” that’s nothing short of rapturous. Almodovar has a knack for crafting images that appeal to the senses, such as a scene in which Lydia is ceremonially dressed for a bullfight, and Almodovar’s soundtrack is attuned to the sonic possibilities of the scene, giving it a great immediacy. Even images so seemingly basic as a man swimming underwater or movement inside a lava lamp reach the audience deeply.
Another wholly successful Almodovar twist comes to light in the film’s last half-hour, in which it is a revealed that a character we like a lot has done something that it, in most opinions, pretty despicable. The character is treated as such by most of the others in the film, but at the same time it’s completely in character for the person, who clearly meant no harm by it, and indeed in typical Almodovar fashion it ends up being helpful.
The film’s performers are all excellent, but the most noteworthy is Javier Camara as Benigno, who crafts a strange and wonderful character with a minimum of affectation. Camara uses his small features and soft body to make Benigno sweet and sensitive, but doesn’t shy away from his sinister undertones, and because he gives himself over to his more basic urges he actually becomes more sympathetic. Dario Grandinetti is also fine as Marco, a more conventional performance, but also a key one as we experience Benigno mostly through his eyes. Praise should also go out to Rosario Flores and Leonor Watling, who display striking screen presences even in the scenes in which their characters are comatose. Watling’s performance is especially striking because she is required to be motionless much of the film while Benigno is caring for her comatose character, and it is to her credit that she’s convincing in this respect.
In ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER and now this film, Pedro Almodovar has revealed himself to be hopelessly fascinated by women. While in the former he focused on their relationships with each other, this time around he has made a film about the men who love them, sometimes beyond all reason, and the hoops through which they will jump out of love for them. It’s a wholly original and strangely moving film, and one I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.
Following the success of his 1999 film ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Spanish director Pedro Almodvar presents TALK TO HER. Driven by similar themes of fate dest...More at Family Video
From Pedro Almod var, the director of the Academy-Award winning All About My Mother (Best Foreign Language Film, 2000), comes his most acclaimed film ...More at Buy.com
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