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Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a must see film
Review: a well directed well palyed film
the atmosphere is allways on the right track (never boring for one minuet).
almadover capture all the right moments to make a good flow in the film.
a good idea that doesnt get lost.
the film is so strong that you dont even pay attention to the fact that it is foreighn
GO AND SEE

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Amazing!
Review: When I heard the description of this story, I thought it sounded boring, and even a bit silly. But I saw it on friends' recommendations, and I was blown away! I don't buy many movies, but after renting this one, I was more than happy to make this purchase.

It is difficult to describe the appeal of this film. The acting is great, and the story is very well told, but I think the thing that sets this film apart is the characters. Almodovar somehow brilliantly manages to make you feel admiration, pity, and even anger at these people (often simultaneously).

This is absolutely one of the best films I've seen in a long time. Rent it, buy it, borrow it, but whatever you do, WATCH IT!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A compelling and tragic masterpiece
Review: "Hable con Ella", as they say in Spain, follows the tragic paths of four people: Marco and Benigno, Lydia and Alicia. Marco falls in love with Lydia, a female bullfighter, who is gored by a bull. Benigno becomes obsessed with a dancer, Alicia, whom he can see from his apartment window practising in a studio. A car knocks Alicia down and Benigno becomes her nurse. Both women slip into a coma and it is in the hospital that the two men meet. Without giving too much of the plot away, they both lose the woman in their lives, but they find friendship with one another. This is the bare bones of the story. As with most of Almodovar's films, there are subtle depths that require repeated viewing to appreciate them fully. Almodavar deftly weaves the separate strands of the complex relationship of the four leading characters into a tightly focused and compelling piece of story-telling. Sad and uplifting, ironic and sympathetic, touching and unsentimental, this is a wonderful film. The acting is first-rate; Alberto Iglesias' score is enchanting, and Javier Aguirresarobe's cinematography is easy on the eye.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Pedro Almodovar's most captivating film yet
Review: Any fan of Pedro Almodovar recognizes the sheer complexity of his work. He brings filmmaking to a level rarely experienced in U.S. American cinemas, mixing the use of the photographic frame with cultural truisms and scathing commentary on sex, gender and love. Among all of his truly phenomenal works, this film is his best to date. The love affairs that Almodovar presents in this film make us, the audience, at once enthralled and uncomfortable. We are, after all, witnesses to a rape that we believe came from a place of love, of a faithful male nurse feeling tiny in comparison to the power of his beautiful comatose patient's inviting organs, calling him in. Pedro Almodovar does what so few directors dare to do: he blurs the lines between love and violence, and asks us if we can still support this tragic, comical and kind man, and whether our more refined protagonist is guilty by association. This film is a gem, and among the best films to be released in the past five years.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Talk to her, listen to him
Review: Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to Her," a first-class film that provided a pleasant surprise on Oscar night, comes to market with commentary from the "chatterbox" Spanish director and one of his actors, Geraldine Chaplin.

Almodovar, who won an Oscar for "Talk to Her's" screenplay, spends a lot of time describing the obvious, but the commentary does have its moments. The director ("Matador") returned to the bullfighting arena in this film, and displays a detailed knowledge of the blood sport's rituals. Actress Rosario Flores spent four months learning how to fight, Almodovar says, and actually received offers for representation as a matador.

Almodovar, suffering from a cold, does most of the talking, laughing at his own torrent of words and at one point promising Chaplin, "I'll be silent at any moment." His chipper chat is in contrast to the film's fairly somber tale of two women in comas. Veteran actress Chaplin is respectful of her director and overly reserved.

Images are a bit soft and tend to be flat in outdoor scenes and dark indoors. Colors are OK, but unusually reserved for the director's work. The Spanish-language film comes in adequate Dolby Digital 5.1. Engish subtitles are in bright yellow, clear and easy to follow. Almodovar and Chaplin's commentary is in Spanish, also with subtitles.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Subtle love graces 'Talk to Her'
Review: Pedro Almodovar has done it again. If anyone else had directed "Talk to Her," (Hable con Ella) it would seem like a revelation; from Almodovar, it is a reassurance of greatness. Both tragic and comic at turns, "Talk to Her" offers the viewer a subtle and aesthetic insight into the deepest questions of humanity -- love, loneliness, connection -- all with the sensibility of a man who loves people as much as he loves movies.

In a brilliant choice that immediately invokes the closely connected fantasy/reality/art connection in "Talk to Her," the film opens with the curtain at a Pina Baucsh dance concert. Two men who have not yet met, Marco (Dario Grandinetti) and Benigno (Javier Camara), sit next to each other in the audience. Marco cries as he watches the two women dance across the stage with their eyes closed -- Benigno notices, but does not say anything.

When they finally meet, it is at the clinic where Benigno works as a nurse. Marco's fiery bullfighter girlfriend Lydia (Rosario Flores) has fallen into a coma after being gored. Benigno too is in charge of caring for a particular woman, a beautiful ballet dancer named Alicia (Leonor Watling). Marco, whose relationship with Lydia was passionate and demanding (and turns out to have been more ambivalent on her side than on his), cannot adjust to her comatose state. He turns to Benigno, who speaks to Alicia and effortlessly lavishes attention upon her as though she were completely animate, and the two begin a close friendship.

Though Marco is the main character of the film, "Talk to Her" is really about Benigno, whose loving kindness turns out to be inextricably linked with a tragic and terrifying desire for Alicia. We see Benigno's story through Marco's eyes and like Marco, we cannot lose faith in Benigno's human goodness no matter what he does. Almodovar's triumph of sympathy lies in his ability to make us love this perpetrator of such a horrible deed -- to understand him, to justify him and even to question the immorality of the act itself. Nothing is as simple as we think, says Almodovar. Not morality, not love, not sanity.

These topics are as serious as any, but the film handles them with an extraordinary amount of subtlety and grace, seamlessly weaving them into the strange, sometimes funny and ultimately lifelike circumstances of the story. The most delightfully comic sequence of the film -- reminiscent of Almodovar's sexually bald "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" and "All About My Mother," in which a man drinks his lover's shrinking potion and begins to grow smaller and smaller until one day he climbs into her vagina and never returns -- occurs simultaneously with the most suspenseful moment of Benigno's moral struggle. Another instance of mixing the comic with the horrible is a discussion early in the film about the phenomenon of priests in Africa raping nuns because AIDS has made them afraid to rape the natives. Though the fate of these unhappy nuns is obviously not funny, the dialogue is hilarious because we recognize ourselves in the characters' outrage.

Similarly, Almodovar plays with cinematic conceptions of suspense when we follow Lydia and Marco down a quiet road to her house on the night of their first meeting and see her confidently blow him off and enter alone, the usual setup for some kind of terror scene. Then Lydia shrieks hysterically as though she is being stabbed. She is terrified of something, but that something turns out to be a tiny snake. She is a female bullfighter with a mortal terror of snakes and Marco is a tough Argentine journalist who cries at the ballet. Almodovar asks us real questions of love, morality and insanity, but we are still having fun.

Indeed, for all of its highfalutin' ideas, "Talk to Her" is not an intellectual movie. The beauty of the dancing is not distinct from the complex empathy we feel for Benigno, which is not distinct from the hilariousness of Lydia's snake fit. It is a dark comedy about men and women. It is a tale of tragic proportions. It is bizarre, it is beautiful, it is disturbing, it is hopeful, it is great. And for being all these things, it is modern.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: good accident
Review: I actually rented this movie by accident. I was hesitant to watch it but I eventually gave it a chance and I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was excellent. The story was so unique. I mean a love story about a guy in love with a comatose girl? But it works.

I felt so bad for Benigno. I knew that it was wrong for him to go after that girl the way he did. It was such a borderline situation between lovesick and obsessed. One minute he's a caring nurse, the next a stalker. But I knew he was sincere. So sincere was he that I was hoping he would take his "sleeping beauty" and run away. I highly recommend purchasing this film or at least renting it. It's a fine example of great cinema.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An elephant sized dump....
Review: yea! The whole chain of events was too farfetched to really pull you in but a decent movie nonetheless...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hope and Despair
Review: Like the film AMORES PERROS, HABLA CON ELLA brings separate lives together in one compelling plot sure to take your breath away. The four main characters exhibit a love for one another that is not only unique, but fascinating to watch. This film is great because of the dilemmas it presents. Love can be disastorous; this film knows that all to well. At the same time, love pierces boundaries nothing else could. HABLE CON ELLA's bittersweet beauty is a great credit to the director and all of Spanish film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another film that should come with a warning label ....
Review: Certainly one must love tragic character studies in order to even get close to this film ..... All the characters except our hero, Benigno, the young man perfectly happy with his lot in life, of caring for brain dead patients selflessy, are pretty sad. None of them really are willing to accept their life and see shortcoming for which they see little hope .....


The critical viewer may look on this film and say 'ignorance is bliss' but no we can not say that Begnigno is ignorant but rather he has mastered to ability to make the absolute best of even the most dire situations. Without giving away the story, even in jail the enthusiasm for life and his love of a young paralyzed dancer does not push him into despair....


I enjoyed the film but again it's probably not everyone's cup of tea ....


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