Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002)

Pedro Almodóvar

Spain

112 min, color and B&W, Spanish (English subtitles)

It is perhaps strange that given the fame of the director yours truly had yet to see a film of his. Talk to Her was my virginal (how appropriate, as it turns out) experience with Almodóvar and I still don't know whether the unsatisfying intercourse would result in subsequent dates. Maybe it's just the nervousness of the first time, without knowing what to expect and not able to relax sufficiently to enjoy it. Or maybe we are fundamentally incompatible and even repeated attempts will only result in a degrading chain of physical acts without so much as slightly pleasurable experience. Time will tell, but I won't be giving him a second chance quite willingly yet.

The bizarre story about the vulnerable journalist Marco (Dario Grandinetti) and the slightly retarded and extremely naive love-sick nurse Benigno (Javier Camara) follows their desperate attempts to hold on to women that they cannot communicate with. Benigno's love interest, the ballerina Alicia (Leonor Watling), is in coma. Marco, on the other hand, is first too busy talking (perhaps out of fear that should he stop he might hear something he does not like) to let the torero Lydia (Rosario Flores) tell him something that clearly bothers her. Then it's too late: She is gored by a bull and falls into coma herself. Together with the woman they cannot talk to, Benigno and Marco forge a close friendship based on shared understanding even if one of them knows he cannot control his feelings while the other still clings to rationality and at least pretends to.

From a mildly nauseating but good-humored and slightly boring story, Talk to Her slowly grows into a somnambulistic nightmare as it gradually reveals that Benigno's passions have taken the best of him. Although marred by making him a bit retarded, and thus capitalizing on cheap sympathy for a character that perhaps does not understand the consequences of his actions, the story nevertheless presents a profoundly disturbing development when Benigno impregnates the comatose Alicia. It is clearly a horrifying act that nobody, even Benigno's hospital friend, can tolerate. No one, that is, but Marco, whose friendship transcends propriety, perhaps because their loves transcend reality. To their mutual horror, Benigno and Marco find themselves roundly rejected by their comatose "lovers". Even unconscious, the women continue to exercise ultimate control and supreme power over the hapless males.

The film falters, however, in presenting the story as a moral dilemma. We are clearly intended to be at least a bit confused in our reactions to Benigno's and, to a lesser extent, Marco's actions. At first, their seemingly selfless dedication to woman who in all likelihood will never know about it, is admirable if a bit creepy. But then their at once more complicated and simpler motivations reveal selfishness, as all love obsessions do. But then Benigno takes the next step, perhaps "inspired" by the silent film that depicts the undying love between a woman scientist and her shrunken lover who enters her vulva while she sleeps and remains there forever, finding gratification in her continuous satisfaction.

At this point we are asked to suspend our conventional morality and perhaps exonerate Benigno just a little bit because his act is obviously motivated by maddening love. Some may even think that the director succeeds in evoking "such complex emotions with such problematic material." Yet in the end, the single undisputed fact remains: Alicia could not say "No" to his amorous advances. Therefore, his "love" is really an act of self-gratification. Therefore it cannot be judged on any other grounds. There is no complexity here, just kinky stuff masquerading as something to really think about and relate to.

However outrageous some of the scenes may have been (and, judging by the nervous giggling in the audience, certain scenes were outrageous although I could not really see why), the film fails in its most important task, which is to move the audience. At least it did not move this reviewer.

February 8, 2003