Pedro Almodóvar Bends Our Ear

Talk to Her opens with a ballet. A curtain rises to reveal two older women, eyes closed, stumbling around a stage. One leads, the other follows, mimicking her movements, and interpreting them in dance. The first woman clings to a wall, seemingly stuck to it; the second follows suit, upstage, moments later. The first woman sinks down the wall, falling on the floor; the second does the same. They glide headlong across the stage, littered with wooden chairs and tables, but though they cannot see, they hit nothing. A man onstage, frenetic and worried, knocks them out of the way just at the last moment.

In the audience two men sit next to each other; later we will find out that they are Benigno and Marco, though we don’t know that yet. Marco is weeping at the action on stage, Benigno is clear-eyed, and glances at the other in interest. They do not know one other, but rest assured: they will over the course of the movie. This is after all a film by Almodóvar.

Cut to Benigno (Javier Cámara), doing the nails of a woman (Leonor Watling) we eventually learn is named Alicia. We cannot see her, but he is talking to her about the ballet; in his description he mentions the blind women, but emphasizes the man who is protecting them, the caregiver. He is wearing scrubs, and the camera pans from his hands to the face of Alicia; she is unconscious and he is talking to her as he cares for her, but she does not hear him. At least that’s the way it seems.

As the scene progresses, we see his and another nurse’s matter-of-fact ministrations upon the unconscious woman. They talk as they expertly clean her, brush her hair, adjust her bed . . . it is all matter-of-fact, clinical, even when they are discussing her period. She is helpless in their hands, completely vulnerable.

Marco (Darío Grandinetti) is a writer of travel guides; he sees Lydia (Rosario Flores) on television and is drawn to her; he calls his editor and asks him to do an article on her. Lydia is a bullfighter (lidia means that in Spanish) in the midst of a messy, public break-up with Niño de Valencia (Adolfo Fernández), a fellow bullfighter. Marco is attracted to her troubles, perhaps to her heartbreak, perhaps to her vulnerability, and it’s not long before we discover why. Ten years before, he lost his love, and has not recovered.

It is not long before they are together, and in case we miss it, Almodóvar tells us in a title that reads “Marco y Lydia.” Marco follows her and bullfighting all around Spain, but Lydia is a fearless bullfighter, and it is a dangerous sport. She is badly gored and ends up — you guessed it — in the same hospital where Benigno is watching over Alicia. This is, after all, a film by Almodóvar.

The two become friends, and Benigno teaches Marco something about caring for an invalid; he’s had plenty of experience, because Alicia has been in a coma for four years. Lydia’s condition is more dire: the goring has destroyed her cerebral cortex, so there is no hope she will awaken. Benigno tells Marco to talk to her, but he cannot bring himself to do it … he can’t bring himself to have the hope. And when Niño returns and tells him they got back together shortly before the accident, he knows it to be true and heads off to do his job once again.

Meanwhile, a lot of other stuff happens, and while it’s interesting, it’s not really the plot that drives this film — or any other by Pedro Almodóvar. Rather, it’s what he does with it, how he subverts the soapy story at every level. AndTalk to Her is perhaps his most subversive, most disturbing, effort yet. Benigno is Alicia’s nurse because he stalked her before her accident. He lives across from the dance studio where she is under the tutelage of choreographer Katerina Bilova (Geraldine Chaplin), and watches her obsessively out of his window.

The subversive thing is that because we first meet him caring lovingly for Alicia, we begin to care about him. So when it is revealed piece by piece how he came to get the job, our dis-ease becomes more acute. Our feelings about what he is doing to Alica take on an extra, uncomfortable dimension. As Almodóvar films him washing her thighs, cleaning her nails, and talking to her as if they are married, we travel increasingly outside of our comfort zone.

Bilova visits the hospital often, and from her Benigno learns of Alicia’s love of silent movies. He haunts these films as well as the ballet, and comes back to tell her about them. In this way, she is kept abreast of these things, even in her coma. But at the same time, Benigno in a sense is becoming Alicia, and in an hilariously over-the-top silent movie parody, a female scientist invents a potion that shrinks her lover. The tiny man roams around on her breasts at night, in shots reminiscent of Alicia in her hospital bed, and finally crawls into her humongous vagina, literally re-entering the womb. Holy Sigmund, Batman.

Identity is a theme Almodóvar returns to again and again in his films; indeed, in Bad Education, his followup to this film, he explores it with gusto. Here, it’s more subtle — if that can ever be said of Pedro — and I think all the more effective for it. As Benigno becomes more and more identified with Alicia, he begins to be interested in Marco, and the question becomes “Is he or is he not gay?” Alicia’s father believes it — Benigno has let him believe it so he can get close to Alicia — and it’s an endless topic of discussion for the nurses at the hospital. That Almodóvar never definitively answers is far more interesting than if we’re told outright. It is as if the director — himself gay — is saying that human sexuality is far more fascinating — and disturbing — than we are aware, and that reducing it to a binary proposition is not a tenable position.

Almodóvar is a master of filmic discomfort, and he ratchets it up with a cold glee as the movie progresses. Although I don’t want to give anything more away, if you thought the film sounds disturbing before the third act, when Marco leaves the hospital, you ain’t seen nothing yet. As Benigno’s actions become increasingly unforgivable, our earlier identification with him becomes more problematic.

Much of this can be chalked up to the performances at the center of Talk to Her. As Benigno, Cámara is nothing short of remarkable. He is very likable, with an appealing, wide-eyed vulnerability. As the film progresses, we find out more and more about him and what motivates him — including a mother from Hell and a father who abandoned him at an early age. Grandinetti has rather less to do, but does it well. In a sense, he is our avatar: we see Benigno through his eyes; his perceptions mirror our own.

It’s become fashionable to like — or pretend to like — Almodóvar’s earlier, more raw output better than films made after his craft matured. Not me: I much prefer his later work. In his later work, beginning perhaps with perhaps 1999s All About My Mother, he displays a complete control, a complete mastery of color and composition. These are all on display here: it’s is a lovely film, precisely composed and beautifully photographed by Almodóvar and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. With long-time art/production designer Antxón Gómez, he creates a believable soap opera world, shot through with danger and his signature sense of color.

A favorite scene comes early, as we see Benigno and a fellow nurse complete their sponge bath of the comatose Alicia. A sheet is laid over her; we can see the outline of her body underneath. It reminds me of the outline of Christ in the shroud of Turin. The sheet is brought up over her head — is she dead? have they been washing a corpse? — but is turned down to expose her head and throat. A hospital gown is draped over her head, lace at the collar. For a moment, it wreaths her head like a bridal headdress; the feeding tube at her throat a pale necklace. The sheet is pulled back, Benigno and the nurse tie the gown off at the sides and it hits us: she is the corpse bride, coldly beautiful in repose.

To say what this portends would be to reveal too much; suffice it to say that as in its opening, Talk to Her closes with a ballet. A row of men line on stage, bare feet toward the audience, as if being readied for the grave. They pass a woman over their heads, down the line, until when she reaches the end, she is lifted up, flying free. Marco is again in the audience, and again he’s weeping; behind him sits Alicia, awake from her coma, wondering at who this sensitive man is. She has been awakened by the actions of Benigno, but it was after Marco’s sojourn at the hospital. Katerina queries him worriedly about what they said; Marco tells her it was nothing. She says they must talk some day and he agrees, saying it will be simpler than she thinks. “Nothing is simple,” she tells him. “I’m a ballet mistress and nothing is simple.”

The closing sequence begins with the line of men, each dancing with a woman. They slowly cross the stage, and though we have not seen it happen, we know that each woman has been passed like the first, over the line of dead men, and then released into the sky. It is a ballet designed by Katerina, and told by her to Benigno earlier in the film, wherein dead soldiers give birth to beautiful, butterfly-like women. Marco is smiling now, and he turns around and looks at Alicia behind him. She smiles, and Katerina shoots her a look of concern. A title below them reads “Marco y Alicia.”

And looking back upon Talk to Her, we can certainly agree with the prima ballerina: nothing is simple, though I think it has little to do with the ballet. Rather, it’s a dance of Pedro Almodóvar’s own creation, a dance of perversity, longing and desire. The way you view it will depend largely upon your tolerance for discomfort and ambiguity, but if you do — view it, that is — it will reward you with food for thought for a long time.

[Note: this was orignally published as part of Counting Down the Naughties at Films for the Soul.  I will have another piece on Bergman's Saraband there tomorrow]