Pedro Almodóvar's follow-up to his highly successful, Oscar
winning All About My Mother is this
off-beat but equally arresting portrayal of two men who develop a
singular kind of friendship through their shared
experiences. In some ways, it is an atypical
Almodóvar - an introspective low-key drama in which the central
characters are not hypoactive and over-talkative women but two
introverted men who have to live with the fact that the women they love
will never talk again. It is a film which offers a purely
male-oriented view of romantic love, something that is surprisingly
rare in cinema, even today.
Less flamboyant and stylised than much of Almodóvar's previous
work, Talk to her has an
intimacy and sharp narrative focus that makes it particularly poignant
and stimulating. It explores the nature of love and friendship
through the experiences of two men - superbly portrayed by Javier
Cámara and Darío Grandinetti - who form a close bond
(which veers towards the homoerotic) through the women they have
lost. In both its subject and its approach, the film shows
Almodóvar gravitating towards a more mature and sophisticated
kind of cinema, where the artistic excesses of his early years are
pared back and far greater attention is given to dramatic substance -
whilst retaining that subversive charm that audiences and critics have
come to love and expect of the man who is now widely regarded as the
world's greatest living filmmaker.
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Next Pedro Almodóvar film: La Mala educación (2004)
Film Synopsis
Marco and Benigno are two men who, despite their very different
backgrounds, are bound to share a common destiny. Marco is a
travel writer who is still traumatised by the break-up with his
girlfriend. He becomes fascinated by the bullfighter Lydia
González and resolves to meet her. They fall in love but,
a few months later, Lydia suffers a near-fatal injury in the bullring
and ends up in a coma. At the clinic where Lydia is being
treated, Marco meets Benigno, a male nurse whose only true love,
Alicia, is also in a coma. Benigno explains that he fell in
love with Alicia when she was a dancer but before he could begin any
kind of relationship with her, she was hit by a car and put into a
comatose state from which she has yet to recover. Benigno has
spent the last four years lovingly caring for Alicia and suggests that
Marco should do the same for Lydia...
In the 1940s, the shadowy, skewed visual style of 1920s German expressionism was taken up by directors of American thrillers and psychological dramas, creating that distinctive film noir look.
In the 1920s French cinema was at its most varied and stylish - witness the achievements of Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Epstein and Jacques Feyder.