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Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Probably the best Almodovar (and Spanish) film
Review: I have been nearly as impressed by this film as by the reviews. First, I would talk about the film, as it was my intention.

Talk to Her has a memorable plot. It really deserves the Oscar it got in 2002. Some other great things are its music, art direction and photography.

It is not a long film. The complexity of the main character's mind is the reason of the first hour of the film. The way he introduces the other man how to care his patient is presented slowly, but every step has its reason. Sure he has got a perverse mind in the end, but there is no reason to consider this is a perverse film...

After this, I cannot resist to "review some reviews". I think this film is morally irreproachable. The rapist, finally pays a price and you can feel sorry about him, but this is not a way to justify his behaviour. You can understand him in some way but he is clearly guilty of what he does.

In any case, if you consider this film makes you throw up, what about all war films?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Artsy without the Fartsy
Review: A thought-provoking piece of work I found enlightening and engaging. You have to watch the movie from beginning to end to understand the plot. Along the lines of tragedy come friendship and a little sadness as two men share their hopes and worries about the comatose women they love. This movie is very well done, colorful, ironic and sweet. A refreshing change from action-packed, formulaic mainstream films we've become used to.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: people who have nothing
Review: People seem to love or hate this movie. I loved it, my #1 movie of the year. I need not do a plot summary. The dance and music are gut wrenching. And remember what Benigno says (ironically referring to himself) "I identified with the Cubans. People who have nothing invent everything."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Nope, didn't like it
Review: I actually had to watch this film because of my job. I never liked Almodovar's films because his "women" are not even real characters. Here, both were in comas (previous films, they are victimized, molested, etc). This "kind" male nurse STALKED the girl, entered her home under false pretenses, entered her bedroom, saw her naked, then later bathes and dresses her while she's in her coma. It's like the only way he can have her is like this. He never wanted an equal, he wanted someone dependent (there seem to be no strong women in Almodovar's films).
As for the "erotic" silent film in the middle...why? Why was it there? Sigh.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: are you joking?
Review: this is insane! am i the only one who notices how horrible this film was? i was getting ready to see something great and instead i was landed with a crappy 2 hour long movie about nothing. the first hour was totally irrelivant. Please tell me, what was the plot? the first hour why was that necessary? people rave about how it expressed love and the stages of adoration yet the first part of the movie, first hour, was about absolutely nothing. Then all of a sudden, the whole "unexistant plot" changes and we are then exposed to a sort of sweet story about a man who is deeply in love with a woman in a coma... if that was the plot, fine, but why stick that horrible and waste of time first hour! please explain this to me, if this is this man's best movie, it makes me wonder what his other movies were like because i can hardly imagine something worse that Habla Con Ella..

... for those who feel that the "rape" was violent or offensive, please not, there was NO violence in the movie, the man by the way if you didnt notice because the movie was so boring, was actually very good to alicia and in the twisted sort of way his raping, if that can be called raped, was what brought the 4 year sleeping beauty back to reality...

am i wrong?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Most Beautiful and Vivid Movies
Review: This is an unbelievable account of a single male nurse living with his mother who falls in love with a ballerina he watches from his apartment window. He stalks her until she is in a car accident and she lies in a coma. Ironically, he becomes her nurse. Another man falls in love with a female matedor and she becomes gored by a bull and lies in a coma next door to the ballerina. The two men become friends and from there the story becomes intertwined with drawing a line between what is love and what is too much. Nothing like you have seen before!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Captivating and emotional-even to a "non-artsy" guy
Review: My town doens't get many of the limited, non-mainstream or so-called "artsy" flicks, but they aren't my cup of tea anyway.

Deciding to make myself look the part, I picked up this DVD and found it quite good. I'm not familar with the director, so I know nothing about how this stacks up to his other works on any terms.

The film begins to tell two storIies that eventually intertwine, and the two respective main characters become friends. Our hero is Marco, a journalist, whom we identify with because he is strong (despite that we see him cry in the first 3 minutes) and gentle, and more level-headed than Benignon (not sure I spelled that right), a male nurse.

Benignon is caring for a comatose dancer whom he has been infaturated with for some time. We see him as childlike and obsessive, but not in a bad way. We feel sorry for him in a helpless kind of way, due in no small part to the brilliant acting. He meets Marco, who is grieving his girlfriend who has also fallen into a coma after a bullfight.

The men's relationship is insightful, non-pretentious male bonding. We are wary, as Marco is, of Benignon. We are unsure of his sexuality and when his meekness may break into an unspeakable act.

Here's the low-down on the much-talked about sexual content of the film. Firstly, there is no sex, but there is a rape, which is not shown. Because we can rest assured that the rape was not violent, I don't see what the big deal is. It was not a plot device either, but a believable and consequential event. There is a magical realist scene in which a man crawls inside a woman's vagina. The scene is only vaguely sexual, more exploratory than anything, and is really too weird to be offensive to me.

The film is in Spanish, a language which I have not studied. It is quite powerful and there is nothing really overbearing about it. The drama is sincere and effective, the dialogue and acting natural and believable, and competently filmed, although in this genre of film, that is a minor requisite. The tragic events don't drag the film down into gloominess or bitterness. In fact, it is still overall rather hopeful and pleasing, as was ONE FLEW OVER THE CUKOO'S NEST.

This is a given for art-house enthusiasts, but those mainstreamers looking to expand their horizons could do well to check out TALK TO HER

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 2.5 stars for this entertaining and divisive film
Review: It seems that people are of two minds about this film; either they think it was offensive ("glorifies rape"), or they think it was one of Almodovar's best films (part of his "mature stage"). I will offer a third view: like all of Almodovar's films, it's entertaining but ultimately trivial; not even worth the fuss of such serious discussion.

Habla con Ella certainly marks Almodovar's "mature" stage, in the sense that the music and themes are more serious and less neurotic or whimsical, and the production value looks to be at an all-time high for his films. Perhaps this is because he recently turned 60. But despite this, his consistent trademark is still maintained here: the film is very entertaining yet never displays any poignancy that could elevate it to classic status.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Disgusting
Review: This movie was disgusting, I almost threw up in during several scenes. The implication that one of main characters actions as a rapist and a stalker as love makes me sick.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very accessible and thematically profound
Review: Pedro Almodóvar, the famous Spanish director, is an auteur, and so you like his style or you don't. He makes rather frantic and gender-based movies, such as "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", which I liked but found rather like a chicken with no head, and "Tie Me Up ! Tie Me Down !".

Apparently he's softened up at this stage. Talk to Her has not much in the way of quirky female characters : in fact, the two women are in a coma. Marco, a journalist and travel writer, is fascinated by Lydia, a famous female bullfighter, and tries to get an interview with her. He gets more than that, as they become a couple. But she is gored in the arena and falls in a coma.

At the hospital, Marco meets Benigno, who works as a nurse for Alicia, a ballerina also in a coma. It becomes quickly obvious that Benigno's relationship with Alicia is a bit more than nurse-patient. Despite himself, Marco takes to a friendship with Benigno, but events will conspire to complicate this seemingly idyllic situation.

Talk to Her is a tightrope event. Almodóvar's story is at once touching and comedic, profound and shallow, and you can take it as great camp or a great drama. The theater plays, and the silent movie parody that Benigno goes to see, also reflect this duality. They are ironically funny, and somewhat ridiculous, but they are also pregnant with significance and can be taken quite seriously.

Look at the scene, for example, where Marco goes to Lydia's house to kill a snake because she has a snake phobia. After doing the deed, Marco sheds a tear. This is campy, but there is also a mystery : why is he crying ? This is answered later in the story, of course, but that's not my point. It's easy to slip from one to the other. It's ironic but also very honest.

Without wanting to spoil the ending, when Benigno commits an act which we would not expect, he suddenly appears to us very differently - it's very incongruous but also chilling. Like most of Almodóvar's movies, Talk to Her is about relationships, but this time about relationships when there is no one answering you on the other side, and how we can forge worlds for ourselves outside of social mores and seem perfectly normal... but also how easy it becomes to fall to the other side of normality.

To someone who is unfamiliar with Almodóvar, this is probably the best movie to start with. It's as colourful and stylized, but it's also very accessible and thematically profound.


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