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Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella)
Pedro Almodovar's more intimate and personal approach to film-making continues to reap rewards. His last feature, All About My Mother, was a delightful yet heart-breaking valentine to the fragile relationship between mothers and sons. Now, with the exquisite Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella), the veteran Spanish writer-director dissects the sinewy emotional threads which bind lovers, and occasionally tie them in knots. Benigno (Javier Camara) works as a nurse at a private clinic called "El Bosque", which specialises in the treatment of coma patients. Alone in the world following the slow and painful death of his mother, Benigno throws himself into his work, developing a special bond with one patient, Alicia (Leonor Watling), a ballet student knocked down in a car accident. During his normal daily routine, Benigno meets esteemed travel guide writer Marco (Dario Grandinetti), and the pair become friends. Marco is at the clinic to watch over his girlfriend Lydia (Mariola Fuentes), Spain's only professional female bullfighter, who was gored in the ring and now lies in a vegetative state, with little chance of recovery. Through their shared suffering, Benigno and Marco find the courage to move with their lives, and to express their feelings to the women they adore. Talk To Her abandons a linear chronological order early on, accelerating backwards and forwards in time to piece together the chain of events which brings Benigno and Marco together at "El Bosque". It's an audacious move, even for Almodovar, which could easily alienate the audience, but the strength and depth of the characters provide a solid fulcrum. Camara delivers a breath-taking performance as a man whose loneliness unleashes a darker side of his personality, contrasting nicely with Grandinetti, whose disenchanted lover can't help himself crying when he reminisces about a previous romance. The evolving relationship between the two men is delicately sketched, then tested to its absolute limit in the surprisingly unsettling final act. On the whole, Almodovar reins in his trademark directorial excesses, but there are still reminders, such as a specially created black and white short entitled "Shrinking Lover", which is inserted into the middle section of the film as a clever smokescreen to a terrifying truth. Once you realise the importance of the segment, you understand that Talk To Her is one of Almodovar's darkest and most compelling films to date.
