|
 Pedro
Almodóvar's Talk to Her affects some people very deeply,
while others, like me, find it high-grade kitsch. The film features
male actors far more than females—something of a novelty for
Almodóvar -- and yet ultimately it is about that old mainstay: the
ineffable mysteriousness of women. Benigno (wonderfully played by
Javier Cámara) is a gentle male nurse who is devoted to his patient,
Alicia (Leonor Watling), a ballet student he used to spy on before
an auto accident left her in an irreversible coma. In the same hospital
is Lydia (Rosario Flores), a bullfighter, also comatose. She is
regularly visited by Marco (Dario Grandinetti), a husky travel-guide
author who was involved with her before her accident in the bull
ring. The two men, so dissimilar on the surface, are linked by their
vigilance. The most evocative (and funny) idea in the movie is that
they get along better with their women than most wide-awake couples
get along with each other. They talk to the ladies as if they could
still hear and understand, and Benigno, for one, believes in miracles.
Almodóvar is more playful when he's making movies about women (or
transvestites or transsexuals). The men here tend to bring out in
him a dull gravitas. The essence of the film's story line is a lot
creepier than Almodóvar allows for; there's something almost fetishistic
about the way he savors the immutability of the women. It's as if
they had become comatose so that the two men could be soul mates.
I'll say this much: It's certainly a novel approach to male bonding.
(1 hr. 56 mins.; R) — PETER RAINER
Opens November 22
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
Spotlight: Leonor Watling
"I've been asked a million times about Penélope Cruz," says
Leonor Watling, Madrid's second-hottest export and star of Pedro
Almodóvar's Talk to Her. "I'm flattered by the comparison,
but I hope I can make my own impressions." Impress us she has—amazing,
considering that the 27-year-old plays a ballet dancer who spends
most of Talk to Her in a coma. "The only way I could impress Pedro
was by not doing anything. I closed my eyes and forgot I was doing
a film—I thought no one would see me, no one would notice I'm
there." Quite the opposite happened, and now she finds herself posing
for Vogue and starring opposite Mark Ruffalo in My Life Without
Me. "I'm not sure how much I want my life changed. I'm afraid
Hollywood might be like an Almodóvar film: a beautiful world
to look at, a terrible place to live."
|
