There is an interesting feel in Pedro Almodovar's HABLE CON ELLA. The film starts and finishes in a theatre, and two characters who eventually meet and create a bond are sitting in close proximity of each other, moved by the drama playing itself on-stage. Javier Camera and Dario Grandinetti play Benigno and Marco. As TALK TO HER begins, they are both watching a play about two women, both mimicking each other's actions, both looking disheveled and with white night gowns. What neither of them know is that they will meet through the most unlikely of ways.
Javier is a loner, a man who lost his mother and has an ambiguous sexuality, who works as a nurse in a hospital. He spies at Alicia, a young dancer (played by Leonor Watling), and we see his desire. He bumps into her on the street, walks her home, and notices her father is a psychiatrist who consults from home. So he sets a session in which he sort of declares he is a homosexual, while Alicia takes a shower. Before he leaves he takes an object from her room, not before he bumps into a naked Alicia and makes up a flimsy excuse as to why he is there. However, he will lose her to an accident which will leave her in a coma.
Marco is a reporter assigned to interview the famous bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) right at the moment she is going through some tough moments since her ex-boyfriend, another toreador called "El Nino de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernandez) has left her the object of media fodder. They become close, but a fateful match with a bull leaves Lydia also in a coma, hovering between life and death in the hospital where Benigno works and takes care of the also comatose Alicia. Marco, while taking care of Lydia, wonders if his interview could have broken her concentration and led to her situation.
It's here when Benigno and Marco meet, and their meeting becomes the fulcrum of HABLE CON ELLA. Benigno opens Marco to the idea that love needs not have a response to be true -- he confides his love for Alicia -- and one sequence is truly disturbing: Benigno's fantasy sequence in which a shrinking man penetrates his wife's vagina, shown in black and white, betrays what can amount to a pathology, and its eventual denouement, something I won't reveal, creates a series of events that accelerate both the moral of the story. Love sometimes can create actions we would deem as monstrous, even when we may not see them as such. Almodovar handles his risky material with incredible taste -- it is rare to see this kind of subject matter on screen -- but Almmodovar makes it seem natural even when at its core, such love can be frightening.
Javier is a loner, a man who lost his mother and has an ambiguous sexuality, who works as a nurse in a hospital. He spies at Alicia, a young dancer (played by Leonor Watling), and we see his desire. He bumps into her on the street, walks her home, and notices her father is a psychiatrist who consults from home. So he sets a session in which he sort of declares he is a homosexual, while Alicia takes a shower. Before he leaves he takes an object from her room, not before he bumps into a naked Alicia and makes up a flimsy excuse as to why he is there. However, he will lose her to an accident which will leave her in a coma.
Marco is a reporter assigned to interview the famous bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) right at the moment she is going through some tough moments since her ex-boyfriend, another toreador called "El Nino de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernandez) has left her the object of media fodder. They become close, but a fateful match with a bull leaves Lydia also in a coma, hovering between life and death in the hospital where Benigno works and takes care of the also comatose Alicia. Marco, while taking care of Lydia, wonders if his interview could have broken her concentration and led to her situation.
It's here when Benigno and Marco meet, and their meeting becomes the fulcrum of HABLE CON ELLA. Benigno opens Marco to the idea that love needs not have a response to be true -- he confides his love for Alicia -- and one sequence is truly disturbing: Benigno's fantasy sequence in which a shrinking man penetrates his wife's vagina, shown in black and white, betrays what can amount to a pathology, and its eventual denouement, something I won't reveal, creates a series of events that accelerate both the moral of the story. Love sometimes can create actions we would deem as monstrous, even when we may not see them as such. Almodovar handles his risky material with incredible taste -- it is rare to see this kind of subject matter on screen -- but Almmodovar makes it seem natural even when at its core, such love can be frightening.