TALK TO HER A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2002 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
TALK TO HER (HABLE CON ELLA) is exquisitely crafted, warmly scored and handsomely shot. Pedro Almodóvar, the writer and director of the OSCAR winning foreign language film ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (TODO SOBRE MI MADRE), has almost all of the critics going gaga again over his newest film. Although his pictures are well made and highly polished, I still don't understand the fascination most of the critical world has for his movies. His stories leave me cold, not caring about or believing in the characters. There is much to admire in Almodóvar's technical proficiency, but his quirky movies make little emotional impact even with all of his narrative tricks, as he moves the timeframes and the storylines back and forth like an ever changing river.
The film's two stories concern two hospitalized women who are in comas that are expected to last indefinitely. Alicia (Leonor Watling) has been unconscious for four years. She is fawningly attended to by a nurse/stalker named Benigno (Javier Cámara). As he massages her body, supposedly to improve her circulation, he tells her stories, including one based on a silent movie. In it, which we see acted out, a woman shrinks a man until he is just six inches tall. Once that tiny, he enters her private parts in order to give her sexual pleasure. It's a weird and sometimes funny scene.
The other story concerns a newly comatose female bullfighter, Lydia (Rosario Flores), who is in the room down the hall from Alicia. Her current boyfriend, Marco (Darío Grandinetti), ends up becoming good friends with Benigno. Before her injury, Lydia, who is fearless in the bullring, is so scared of snakes that she moves out of her house forever when one appears in her kitchen. This is one of many parts of the script that just didn't ring true. Another was Benigno's being seriously referred to as a "retard," since he showed absolutely no evidence of any diminished mental capacity.
I admired TALK TO HER, but I never liked it. When it was over, I felt like the only thing it had done for me was to occupy two hours of my life. I don't look forward to Almodóvar's next picture, but I'm sure most other critics will.
TALK TO HER runs 1:52. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. It is rated R for "nudity, sexual content and some language" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Christmas Day, 2002. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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