Small Talk

reviewed Thu, 13 Feb 2003

So I’m trying to distract myself from not having plastic sheeting, and from headlines like the one I saw on washingtonpost.com a few days ago that said, “Anti-Aircraft Guns Now Ring DC,” like, talk about words you don’t want to see in relation to your city (particularly since it wasn’t immediately clear that they’re our guns), and from how a guy that three-quarters of the country didn’t vote for is railroading us into a war that no one else in the world, except Tony “Lap Dog” Blair, thinks is a good idea while also taking us back to a state of economic inequality not seen since the good old days of the Gilded Age.

Also, I have a lot of Oscar-contending movies to see.

So I went to Talk to Her (Hable con ella), for which Pedro Almodóvar received writing and directing Oscar nominations.  I can’t say I was terribly impressed by it.  It might be another case of misplaced expectations:  it doesn’t live up to the rapturous reviews, and I was expecting something lighter and less creepy.  I was underwhelmed, let’s say.

The film features Almodóvar’s usual melodrama and twisted sweetness, but it doesn’t have the warmth and connection that, for example, All About My Mother did, nor the outrageous humor of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  It bonds two men keeping vigil over the comatose women they love (doesn't that phrase sound like it should lead into a joke?  Sorry, I can't think of one).  Soft, shapeless Benigno (Javier Cámara) has devoted his life to tending to Alicia (Leonor Watling); he helps travel writer Marco (Darío Grandinetti) adjust when Marco’s matador girlfriend, Lydia (Rosario Flores) falls into her coma.

I don’t know if Almodóvar intended us to be quite as repulsed by Benigno as I was.  On paper, he sounds sweet – chatting with Alicia because he believes she can hear him (although he starts to sound unsettlingly like Dennis Hopper in River’s Edge: “I know Ellie’s a doll.  Right, Ellie?”) and spending almost all his time with her even though (actually, because) he never had a relationship with her when she was conscious.  But in execution, he becomes quite creepy, anything but benign, and although I think we’re meant to feel sympathy for him, I couldn’t muster much.

All the leads give good performances, and the friendship that develops between Marco and Benigno is lovely to watch.  It’s hard for me to pinpoint anything “wrong” with it – except that it’s too into its own artificiality, with opaque dance recitals that are supposed to be moving and symbolic but just come off as stupid and overblown – I just don’t think it’s one of his better efforts.  Still, it’s better than most of the other stuff out there; adjust your expectations, and you should enjoy it just fine.

And I always like when Almodóvar releases a new movie and does press; he always says the most wonderful things.  Like his advice to budding moviemakers:

"Don't try to make comedies if you don't have a sense of humor, even if the script is an adaptation of an original Billy Wilder.  If you don't know what a human being is, don't try to make dramas.  Be conventional and accept work making sequels of sequels.  If your films make money, it will not matter if they seem like real life or not."


Random Oscar link:  On a bedside table in one scene is the novel The Hours.

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