Teyss
Almodovar's movies are generally strange, with eccentric characters, complex pasts, dark secrets, traumas, gripping revelations and dramatic changes. His message is: life is made of surprises, be open-minded, do not judge, appreciate people and events for what they are, not for what you think they are or what you want them to be.On the one hand, "Talk to Her" is more moderate than most of his previous movies: the story makes sense, characters are apparently "normal", provocations are reduced, the music is lovely. On the other hand, what Almodovar tames in plot and roles, he unleashes in form and symbols. It is a peculiar movie, turning values upside down: our thoughts and emotions are puzzled. *** WARNING : CONTAINS SPOILERS ***MALE/FEMALE. Lydia is a bullfighter, a traditionally masculine activity. Benigno is a nurse, a traditionally feminine activity. Marco frequently cries (six times in total). There are homosexual undertones in the friendship between the two men.Almodovar is fascinated by women. This movie is a tribute to them. Alicia and Lydia are the main characters, which is paradoxical since they spend a long moment in a coma.PAST/PRESENT. The movie disintegrates time. It suddenly jumps ahead ("A few months later"); a "present" scene is repeated during a flashback; there is a long flashback ("Four years earlier"), which surprisingly ends as if Benigno were narrating it. The movie inserts five texts indicating periods, but this adds to the confusion since three other flashbacks are not indicated (Marco remembers an evening and a wedding with Lydia, Benigno writes a letter in jail).LIFE/DEATH. The two comatose women seem alive. Alicia is treated like a living person: Benigno talks to her, cuts her hair, massages her and eventually makes love to her. When Benigno tells Marco he saw him crying at the theatre, he puts drops into her eyes: symbolically, she weeps as Marco did. When the two women are next to each other in their armchairs, their heads are tilted so that they seem to watch each other, and Benigno says to Marco: "It seems they are talking about us." After Lydia is hit by the bull, there is a subjective shot of people carrying her: we see what she sees as if she were alive.The flashbacks noted above also "resuscitate" the two women, since we alternatively see them comatose and alive.SANE/INSANE. Marco is reasonable, but achieves nothing: his former girlfriend left him, Lydia was also about to leave him, she dies, his best friend dies. Conversely, Benigno is somewhat deranged but kindly dedicates his life to other people: his mother, Alicia, Marco.GOOD/EVIL. When characters make a good deed, it can have negative effects, and reversely. At the jail, Marco does not tell Benigno that Alicia is alive because he is uncertain how he could react; however, Benigno afterwards commits suicide to reunite with Alicia since he thinks she is still comatose. As an opposite example, Benigno rapes Alicia when she is unconscious, thinking it is a demonstration of love. It is a horrible act… yet because of this Alicia will awaken.BEAUTY/HORROR. Two comatose women, two deaths (Benigno's mother, Lydia), a suicide (Benigno), a rape, a stillborn baby: apparently, it is a sombre movie. Yet it is always decent and delicate. Also, out of these hardships, life emerges and hope blossoms: Alicia awakens and meets Marco.COUPLE/LONELINESS. Relationships are either doomed (Marco separates from two girlfriends), either strange (Benigno loves a woman in a coma). Dialogues within couples are rare. Lydia barely talks to Marco and after her accident, he is unable to speak to her as Benigno urges him to. In the car, Lydia tells Marco they need to discuss after the bullfight. We await an important revelation, especially since we see this scene twice… but Lydia falls into a coma (another bullfighter will reveal the secret).By contrast, emotional experiences are mainly linked to friendship (Marco and Benigno) or individual connection to art. There are five key artistic scenes: three choreographies by celebrated Pina Bausch (one opens the movie and two close it), a fake film, a live song by celebrated Caetano Veloso. Interestingly, three of these five scenes are silent and two are sung: it highlights the superiority of art over articulated speech to communicate emotions and meaning.The movie opens on a choreography where two women blindly move while a man removes chairs so they won't bump into them. This announces the two unconscious women and Benigno taking care of Alicia.At the end, another choreography shows a woman carried in the air by men, while a glamorous song plays. It symbolises resurrection: of the two women shown at the beginning, only one remains alive (Alicia).The movie closes on a simple yet beautiful choreography, where couples slowly dance from left to right on the rhythm of a sensuous music. Their regular and tranquil pace reinstates the linear movement of time that was disturbed during the movie. In the last shot, a woman and a man are left alone on stage. It shows the seduction game will carry on with Alicia and Marco.The fake silent film extract is funny, erotic, incredible, gently caricaturing old cinema style. It reveals the desire of Benigno, who is a virgin, for Alicia. After seeing it and telling her about it, he makes love to her, which will bring her back to life. It also symbolises the desire to return into the mother's womb: a reference to Benigno previously being very close to his mother, permanently taking care of her.The live song is about a love story which, naturally, is desperate.-----"Talk to Her" can be disconcerting: it feels topsy-turvy, it sometimes is bleak, some scenes are intimate physically or emotionally. Yet Almodovar enchants us, once again, by his graceful style, the touching personalities and his vision about art.
Alexandra Yepes
"Talk to Her" shows two parallel stories that are correlated, two lonely men expect a miracle and in that twist of fate their women are in a coma and they should expect them to wake up. The story takes place between the present and past of romantic relationships of two couples. When I saw this movie for the first time, I felt seeing the most beautiful movie I had seen in my life. I had deep feelings for the situations that the characters lived. After the first feeling I wanted to know more of this director's work. I started to see other movies and quickly I realized that I was completely impressed by the work of Almodovar, especially for its complex and unpredictable full of depth and emotion content. "Talk to Her" is a film full of symbolism, colors that remain in memory, music (Caetano Veloso) that makes the imagination and passion fly, passion for life and death. The naturalness of the performances and sensual universe created is simply magnificent. In short, this drama of impossible love, painful memories and beautiful images, is the kind of movie I love to watch and I would love to do. This is a film that invites you to reflect on life and causes a lot of emotions.
laurafugate
Almodóvar has again proved his uniquely talented capacity to deliver an emotionally textured and morally ambiguous drama. What superficially appears to be a story of two men's shared experience of caring for the comatose women they love, reveals to be as much – if not more – about the relationship that develops between the two male protagonists, Marco and Benigno. Their differences draw them together and offer them the opportunity for understanding and human connection unlike what either has experienced in a romantic context. Talk to Her challenges our conceptions of intimacy, questions our associations of femininity, and examines our reactions to love and loss. Marco, a sensitive but disconnected travel writer, is paralyzed with hopelessness after a bull gorging leaves his matador lover, Lydia in a coma. Benigno, an obsessively loyal and socially stunted nurse, has dedicated four years of round-the-clock care to Alicia, a woman who has not (and now cannot)requite his affections. Marco is physically present in Lydia's room,but he cannot connect. He confides in Benigno: "I can't even touch her…I feel so despicable." Benigno behavior toward Alicia is so far on the other end of the spectrum that it culminates in a morally deplorable action. He feels his love for Alicia is enough to sustain their "relationship," even stating that they "get along better than most married couples." A logical unfolding of the story from this point might have assumed that Marco would emerge as the moral hero, helping Benigno understand the errors of his mentality and saving him from a life of irrational and criminal obsession. Oh, but Almodóvar would never let us off so simply. Benigno is the unconventional hero who teaches Marco that the root of love is in the ability to communicate.What both men find in their friendship with each other is a reciprocal intimacy that neither one has experienced with the women they love. Loneliness is their shared adversary. Instead of harping on Benigno's skewed morality and social ineptitude, Marco sees the beauty of loyalty and confidence of character exhibited by his new friend. Through the glass wall at the prison, Benigno, destitute and forsaken, desires simply the physical contact of a hug from the only person who has not abandoned him. Both men express traits typically associated as feminine – care-giving, grieving, longing for intimacy, crying over loss as well as beauty. Yet, even when their sexual orientation is explicitly questioned, neither feels compelled to defend their masculinity or correct the assumption. With consistency, Almodóvar continues to challenge gender roles and social norms. Talk to Her is framed in circularity as it begins and ends with segments from two different live ballets. The characters' presence and reactions as member of the audience serve as a vehicle to fill in deeply layered emotion without the use of dialogue or explanation. Almodóvar also utilizes this technique in the middle of the film with a creative homage to the avant-garde silent melodramas of the 1920s. As Benigno tells Alicia,"The Shrinking Man" is about a doomed lover so devoted that he sacrifices himself to be part of his mistress forever. This break in the narrative actually serves to pull the audience deeper into Benigno's psyche while also symbolizing the action of insemination. By not filming the sexual act itself, Almodóvar pushes the moral ambiguity of the case and avoids casting Benigno strictly as a rapist. The theme of the film is not about answering whether or not Benigno is a "bad guy." The presentation of the moral dilemma intentionally blurs the lines and forces the audience to see Benigno as a person beyond his actions. The task of creating such emotionally complex characters that can successfully draw surprising sympathy from viewers warrants tremendous praise. While Talk to Her may be considered a bit of a walk on the main-stream side for such an experimental counterculture director, Almodóvar has succeeded in challenging a more traditional audience to connect with emotional intellect to non- traditional cinema.
