Review of Talk to Her (2002) by Kenneth L — 08 May 2015

This is the third film I've seen by Pedro Almodovar, and maybe the first to convince me that perhaps he really is a genius. This is one of those brilliant screenplays that comes along every once in a while that seems truly original and unique, while still telling a very moving and human story. This is one of the only foreign films to ever win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, and it very well deserved it.

The film follows four characters: two women who both end up in comas, and the two men who attend to them. Alicia (Leonor Watling), a ballet dancer, has been in a coma for four years following a car accident. Benigno (Javier Camara), a gentle but awkward and odd male nurse, has been faithfully taking care of her for years. Lydia (Rosario Flores)is a bold bullfighter who is trampled by a bull and ends up in a coma; Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is her boyfriend who doesn't really know what to do now. As the two women lie comatose, the two men start a tentative sort of friendship.

I don't want to spoil the story at all, but suffice it to say that it takes a number of surprising turns. It also deals with extremely difficult, complicated moral questions with an incredibly fine sense of nuance and balance. It would have been easy to totally have this movie go the wrong way, but Almodovar pulls it off and makes it look easy. There are a couple of fun flights of fancy here (including a fictitious silent film within the film), but for the most part the film feels very grounded and believable, even as shocking things happen. This is a movie I would recommend very highly to just about anyone.