Talk To Her - Page 2

Neither Benigno or Marco really knew these women in their waking lives. Benigno watched Alicia in her dance classes, from across the street, through his window. Marco had just recently met Lydia, interviewing her for a magazine, and finding the beginnings of romance. It is really only through their caring of these women while they are asleep that they begin to feel love for them.

Almodovar is careful to portray the characters as sympathetic while still tainting their devotions with something sinister, something perverse. As the stories conclude, one character’s actions become slightly horrific, and yet we still feel sympathy for him. Almodovar understands life’s complications and that it is too easy to broadly label people as one thing, when reality goes much deeper.

In keeping with the kinkiness of his prior films, Almodovar throws in a sequence with Benigno retelling a silent film he watched recently. It rivals the bath tub scene in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, and inside the cheerleader’s pants scene in the USA's Up All Night classic, Getting Lucky. Let’s just say for lovers of perverse, whacked out cinema, it is a must-see.

Ultimately, Talk to Her is a bizarre, but moving portrait of unrequited love, friendship and the complexity of human life. It is undoubtedly a difficult film emotionally, but one definitely worth sitting through and contemplating.

Article Author: Mat Brewster

Mat Brewster is a periodic ex-pat wondering if he'll ever find a home. You can find him musing on pop culture, and obsessing over concert bootlegs at The Midnight Cafe.

Visit Mat Brewster's author page — Mat Brewster's Blog