Patrick McElroy on his pick for 21st century masterpiece: Almodovar's TALK TO HER
Writer and director Pedro Almodovar once said, “The characters in my films are assassins, rapists and so on, but I don’t treat them as criminals, I talk about their humanity.” Rarely is this as true than in his 2002 masterpiece Talk To Her, which was released twenty years ago this week.
Like many of his films, it walks in part of the tradition of classic Hollywood melodramas, and he combines them with his European sensibilities. The plot of the film revolves around two women who have fallen in to comas, one of them Lydia (Rosario Flores) a matador, and Alicia (Leonor Watling), and the men who are there to support them even though there’s a wall put up against them.
For Lydia the man who is there for her is Marco (Dario Grandinetti) a journalist, and for Alicia its Benigno (Javier Camara) a male nurse. Not much else can be said about the plot or the characters, because through flashback and forward the movie reveals twists and surprises that deserve to be experienced upon viewing.
Released twenty-two years after his feature film debut with his underground success Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, Almodovar revealed a newer level of maturity and wisdom in his work, that contrasted with his earlier kitsch, camp, and shock. The movie would also be his first film to utilize the flashback technique, where it’s often used as a gimmick, here Almodovar uses it to reveal different layers, and truths to his characters. One of the characters in the film lies, and commits an unspeakable act later in the film, but you’ve followed him for so long that he’s maybe the most empathetic character in the film.
In other hands the films material could’ve been a soap opera, but Almodovar takes what’s problematic material, and makes it reveal deep human truths through his characters in a similar vein to that of Sirk, or Fassbinder. He also creates a very powerful color palette, mostly consisting of red, to represent blood, which is what’s keeping the two women alive. He then frames them in symmetrical compositions to show that these women, and these men live parallel lives, even though some of them never meet each other, and how they react differently to their similar fates.
When Talk to Her was released it received some of the strongest acclaim of Almodovar’s career, Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin gave it a full four out of four- star review. It would then go on to win the Cesar award for Best European Union-film, and the European Film Award for Best European film. But the biggest honor it would receive was the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, making it the fifth foreign language film to win in the category, the first in forty-five years since A Man and a Woman.
In 2006 filmmaker and former critic Paul Schrader wrote the Cannon Fodder, where he selected sixty of his favorite movies, and he would rank Talk to Her at 46, making it the most recent movie on there. Then in 2016 BBC made a list of the greatest films of the 21st century, and it was ranked at number 28. Almodovar is one the greatest filmmakers to emerge within the last half century, every time one of his films is released, it’s always one of my most anticipated events of the year.
Out of his entire filmography Talk to Her is my favorite, because it’s so rich and emotional and it brings out all his best qualities. If you’ve never seen it please seek it out, and you’ll see the genius at the height of his powers.
Patrick McElroy is a movie writer and movie lover based in Los Angeles. Check out his other writing at: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.mcelroy.3726 or his IG: @mcelroy.patrick