Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

Rating:
Summary: Hug a Stalker, Won't You?
Review: Talk to Her is the kind of film that breaks your heart as a viewer, and not in a good way. So much about it screams out for adoration - the gorgeous photography, the economy of dialogue, the small moments of humor. And yet, all of that is squandered in the final third of the movie, which tries (and fails) to romanticize the actions of a complete psychopath. The character in question is Benigno (Javier Camara, in an outstandingly creepy performance), a male nurse who, an hour into Talk to Her, commits a crime that can't possibly be justified. But director Pedro Almodóvar stupidly insists on turning Benigno into a symbolic martyr of some kind, which has to be one of the most fatal flaws in movie history (and I saw Scooby Doo). The result of Almodóvar's misguidance is bound to make most viewers, conservative or liberal, bitter and hostile toward Talk to Her.

Benigno's portrayal undermines nearly everything in the film. It makes his deep friendship with a journalist (Dario Grandinetti) seem implausible. And it causes Almodóvar to abandon the character of Lydia (Rosario Flores), a female bullfighter who dominates the fascinating opening third of the movie. Once we learn a secret Lydia has been hiding, her character (admittedly comatose) vanishes, and she is sorely missed. We're then left with a sort of "love triangle" that rings false in almost every way.

The turning point that sends Talk to Her spinning downward is a short movie-within-the-movie that, at first, is a campy spin on old silent movies. But a few minutes in, it turns into one of those self-pretentiously disturbing scenes (think Prince Charles) that should have a warning sticker on it saying, "Director Going Overboard". You will squirm, and worse, for no real purpose. Almodóvar has been hailed as great director and portrayer of women. But you'll be hard pressed to find the subsequent scenes woman-friendly. Talk to Her starts out a fascinating study of relationships, only to then wallow in the literal objectification of women. Here, women are a tool to help men find salvation. It's a stupid and arrogant idea, and it'll make Almodóvar no new fans, no matter how clearly talented he may be.

Rating:
Summary: Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)
Review: I really wanted to love this movie. The cinematography was beautiful and I tried hard to sympathize with the protagonists presented by Almodovar. But ultimately I found it impossible to identify with a rapist. This movie is yet another example of rape and other violence against women is normalized and eroticised in film. It's really very simple and the complex statement about how love crosses boundaries, is false. A man having sex with a woman who is not able to consent, because she is in a coma, is disgusting and makes me very angry.

Rating:
Summary: Almodvar Matures
Review: I am a big fan of Almodvar and all his movies. He is one of the very few directors in film history that creates movies that are hugely artistic and commercialy successful. He managed to create a style of his own, visually and conceptually. This movie is a lot different from all his earlier movies. You can recognize his camera style, the acting, the music, and the light comedy but you will not see the strong melodrama and the camp elemets. This movie is Almodvar mixed with a bit of Bergman. This is a start of a new phase in his directing career and I am looking forward to see what he is going to do next..

Rating:
Summary: Another Treasure of a Film from a Contemporary Master
Review: Some directors have infrequent moments of brilliance in an otherwise average output. Other directors approach the exceptional but just don't quite make it. Pedro Almadovar is a gifted artist who consistently creates works of art on film that are brave, bizarre, are about subjects that few others would venture, and his end product is not only a story well told but one told with an attention to every detail that makes movies magic. His sense of atmosphere, of color, of set decor, of flashbacks - stream of conscious writing just when the story seems oddly concrete - of choice of music - all are first rate. The black and white silent movie within a movie is at once hilarious and tender. Almadovar is a poet and he is graced by a company of actors who obviously treasure the experience of his creations. Muc has been said about the story line of this movie and another synopsis is simply redundant. Suffice it to say that here is a story about how we as individuals bond with others and the circumstances that can accompany that bonding, here, stretches the imagination in a wondrous way. ALL of the actors are excellent and wholly credible. The DVD is graced by a conversation between Almadovar and Geraldine Chaplin in one of the most sensitive interactions with creator and created that is on film. This is a lustrously beautiful, wise, gently comedic, and tragic tale. With all of the inherent gloom and doom in this story the viewer is left with a refreshingly life-affirming glow. This should be in every movie lover's collection.

Rating:
Summary: Enigmatic characters, enigmatic desires
Review: "Talk To Her"--the title holds more than a bit of irony for the women in this film are in comas. This is the most enigmatic of Almovodars films. And the male nurse Benigno is the most enigmatic character to appear in any of those films. Does Benigno like women? Yes apparently. Does Benigno like men? Yes apparently. Apparently, but nothing is certain about Benigno. Like many of Almovodars heros and heroines Benigno is obsessed by someone or perhaps two someones. We know he is obsessed with Alicia, a dancer, now in a coma, who he has been hired to care for. But also he is obsessed with the soft spoken travel journalist Marco. Marco's bullfighting girlfriend is also in a coma and so he visits her in the hospital where Benigno cares for Alicia. Marco catches Benignos eye and to lure Marco to him he positions Alicias nude comatose body in provacative postions and leaves her door ajar so a passing Marco will catch a glimpse of her and enter. So the two meet and a strange friendship materialises over a shared obsession over comatose Alicia. But neither of them can "talk to her". So they talk to each other. But as always in all obsessive love triangles someone ends up betraying someone. That proves true here as well but nothing else about this love triangle is usual.

The characters all remain enigmatic perhaps even to themselves but obsession proves to be the thing that gives life its meaning as is so often true in Almovodars films. To Almovodar women are mysterious and never moreso than when they are in a coma. By having the object of desire both vulnerable and close and yet so utterly remote at the same time Almovodar gives us his most mysterious meditation on the nature of love yet. The very funny fantasy scenario with shrinking man climbing into sleeping woman is perhaps the most absurd literalization of obsession ever filmed.

Rating:
Summary: The emperor's new clothes
Review: I am absolutely dumbfounded and amazed at the number of people who rhapsodize about this film, and can only conclude that its popularity is an example of "the emperor's new clothes" mentality... What I'd like to point out is that one of the main characters is a stalker and rapist who completely violates the woman with whom he is "in love." Apparently, viewers of this film who like it seem to think his actions are less repugnant because he is depicted as being "in love" and because his victim is in a coma! ... Well, I don't know how they define love, but stalking, violating, raping and impregnating a defenceless woman are hardly part of MY definition! To me there is nothing bittersweet about this story and I felt nothing but revulsion and anger towards this character and the movie as a whole. The director utterly manipulates the audience to feel sympathy for this idiot; it amazes me that most viewers seem oblivious to this. If a story about a lynching KKK member were just as beautifully,skillfully and cleverly filmed, acted and scored, would you not see beyond that to its repugnant core?!!! It's a horrible premise, sugar-coated to seem "poignant" and "deep" and "moving", but one which, in my opinion, anyone who is truly caring would NOT be able to get beyond. Besides all this, it's a pretentious, totally melodramatic movie with an utterly ridiculous, laughably overwrought ending. I can't believe anyone could find this movie moving. And what is all this ridiculous stuff about how Pedro Almodovar loves women, understands women, etc. I think this movie makes it pretty apparent he has no empathy whatsoever for women and in fact quite probably has a few problems with them! (Incidentally, 4 bulls were slaughtered for the purposes of making this film, leading Almodovar to be charged and fined. Nice guy. Caring, sensitive guy.)

Rating:
Summary: odd form of redemption
Review: Spanish with English subtitles. not a problem. dialog is easy to follow and don't miss the movie because you dislike subtitles.

Odd, but not bizzare, view of redemption via not-quite-mature love.
It's the story of a mama's boy, who falls in love with a ballerina next-door, but is too shy and selfconscious to woo her in a normal way. But his opportunity comes when she is put into a coma with a traffic accident. He becomes her primary caregiver. He talks to the comatose girl and does her hair, her fingers, massages and washes her daily. Falling in 'love' with an object of desire who never talks back, never interacts except in his head. He is smitten with a silent movie and rapes her one night. fired from the job, jailed, out of touch with the only thing that matters to him, he eventually commits suicide. While she, still comatose delivers a stillborn baby and awakens as a result.

There is much to think about in this gentle movie...Interaction with the woman, interaction with another story line about a comatose bullfighter and her boyfriend. But most of all the story about him. Never loved, yet tender, unable to express himself to a live conscious woman, he truely loves her as a person despite her inability to return his love at all. A surprising movie, worth the time to see.

Rating:
Summary: Franco would be proud...
Review: Talk to Her could have been a great film. Almadovar has obviously mastered the art of the narrative film. He has developed and matured tremendously as a writer since his early overly slapstick films. His visual abilities have progressed far beyond most of his peers.

So why did I make the statement that "Talk to Her could have been a great film"? Because there is a line that needs to be drawn as to what is acceptable in cinema. Western society has progressed beyond the point of rape being anything but bad. Sure every nation may punish rapists differently, but it is assumed that rape is a bad thing. In Talk to Her, a character rapes a comatose woman, and that woman is awoken, revived, saved when she gives birth (a direct result from the rape) to a stillborn child. In my opinion, this is sick and demented, to maintain that a female character can be saved by a rape? The rapist is ostracized from society (and more importantly the comatose woman that he "loves") and rightly punished (jailed), but this does not fix the problem I have, the woman was still "saved" by being raped. It could be argued that his "love" saved her, but that "love" was represented by non-consentual sex. Of course the rapist has an excuse, he's a social outcast, boardering on mental retardation. So, he didn't know better. He didn't know it was wrong. He was only living by his emotions, he wasn't thinking. Does this make it any better? I know this is Spain, a country deeply routed in Catholicism, but was abortion really not an option for a woman that is in a coma and becomes pregnant by rape. Think of the metaphors involved in a much more progressive scenario in which the hospital aborts the baby, and she wakes up. The abortion saves her life. Not the rape.

Without that minor (?) plot point, Talk to Her would rank up there with All About My Mother, as one of Almadovar's greatest films. Instead, Almadovar opened my eyes to his conservative, machismo attitude and closed my eyes to his talents as a filmmaker.

Of course, many Almadovar fans can look right past this. Many did not even notice, or said I was reading into the situation too much. So maybe its just me. Or maybe I now understand what many of my leftist, intellectual friends have told me from the beginning, Almadovar is clearly a product of Franco Spain. I can think of no greater insult.

Rating:
Summary: An overrated and disappointing film by Almodóvar
Review: I think part of the critical honeymoon this film has enjoyed has to do with Almodóvar's oeuvre, which has been consistently provocative, challenging, and interesting. He has made some very good films, such as the hilarious "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and the intriguing "Law of Desire" (La Ley del deseo), and some very disappointing films, such as "Matador" and "Tie me up, Tie me Down." I would place this film in the middle of the spectrum, despite all the hype about it being Almodóvar's most accessible film. My objections to the film are primarily artistic, but I happen to find it morally reprehensible as well. Had the story been done with greater depth and sensitivity, I would undoubtedly find little in the way of a "moral" objection. In fact, I find that the director "uses" the women in this film in the same way as the male characters use them, as vessels for their hopes, dreams, and desires, not as automomous individuals with their own hopes, dreams, and desires. I find that objectionable on many levels. Dario Grandinetti as Marco is effective, if somewhat one-note, and Javier Camara as the childlike Benigno is adequately convincing in a complex role. The female roles are lacking in the depth and richness with which Almodóvar usually infuses his women, which is unfortunate given the title of the film. Caetano Veloso does a lovely version of "Cucurucucu Paloma," but the tenderness of his version of the standard is out of place, even wasted, in a film which often descends into tawdry melodrama and very pat characterizations. I know we'll see better work out of Pedro Almodóvar, and I hope he doesn't believe all the publicity about this particular film (as Simone Signoret famously said: "My performance is finished, and publicity will not make it better").

Rating:
Summary: Extracted from Stars
Review: This movie is one of its kind. I have seen nothing like this. Pedro Almodovar blended comedy, romance, and drama like no one has ever done. Life has many colors, and this movie reminds us again. You won't regret watching it.