Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar

¶ … Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar often presents his themes in a satiric and comic framework emphasizing certain melodramatic and exaggerated elements. His film Talk to Her (2002) is not as darkly comedic or as exaggerated as some of his films, but he uses the various elements of film to heighten the odd nature of his characters and to illuminate their inner states on the basis of external action, sets, and camerawork. A primary mental state for these characters is that of audience, for life to a great degree is a spectator sport at which they are better as observers than participants.

The film maintains a certain theatricality throughout, beginning with the opening shot, which is revealed as a curtain is drawn back as if for a stage play. Indeed, the first thing seen in the film is a stage play, a very odd interaction at which the main character is seated in the audience. The film ends in the theater once more, and the sense of life as a theater piece infuses the film. Two men are watching the performance, Marco and Benigno. They do not know each other, but they will become friends later and will be important to each other, serving as complements to one another.

The image created by the dance piece in the opening is also important, for it is a dance number in which two females are writhing on stage in a rather freewheeling manner as two men move chairs and tables out of the way to allow them to continue without getting hurt. This create an image that characterizes the film as both Marco and Benigno serve the needs of the women in their lives and to a great degree lose themselves in the worship of these women, much as the two men on stage move fast to keep the women from hitting a chair or table.

The metaphor of watching as in a theater carries through the film. These two men meet in a hospital where Marco's girl friend, a female bullfighter, lies in a coma after having been gored, while Benigno is a male nurse who takes care of a dancer who is also in a coma after an accident. The situation is somewhat contrived, and the two men meet and become friends, having in common the fact that they are caring for women who cannot speak or relate to them in any way. Marco's girl friend indeed was about to break up with him, as he learns, while Benigno is caring for a woman who does not know him at all.

Later, after the dancer wakes from her coma, Marco observes her from Benigno's old apartment as if watching a performance, seeing her across the street in her dance studio. The men are always watching the women, and often the women are unaware of being watched. When the men do manage to meet and communicate with a woman, the woman is clearly in charge. This is evident in Marco's relationship with the bullfighter, and it is repeated in a different way when Marco pursues the dancer. Benigno's experience with women is also subservient, and more than this, the fact that the only way he can relate to a woman is if she is in a coma adds to the sense of male helplessness in the film. Marco makes a connection with women that Benigno never does, but he is still the observer first.

The theatricality of the situation is also enhanced by the film-within-a-film as Benigno tells the unconscious dancer about a silent film he saw, one which reflects his dream for a relationship with her while also suggesting something unhealthy about such a relationship. The stark black-and-while photography of the dream contrasts with the more lush and often garishly-colored "real" world of the rest of the film. Much of the first part of the film takes place in a hospital, with brown walls, blue uniforms for the staff, and dark clothes for Marco and other visitors. The hospital setting seems isolated from life, as does the prison to which Benigno is sent for inappropriate behavior with a comatose patient. The prison is even more isolated, existing in the middle of a stark landscape far from the rest of the world, and seemingly inhabited only by a few guards and Benigno.

Marco is a dour, athletic man, contained and unemotional. Benigno is softer, somewhat doughy, and more emotional. The two men change places in the course of the film. A flashback to four years earlier shows Benigno observing the dancer from across the street, then following her to try to talk to her. Later, after the dancer awakes from her come, Marco is seen in the same settings doing much the same thing, though connecting in a way Benigno never can. Marco lives out Benigno's intentions and his dream, though in his own way. The two men shift places, the way each is shown looking out the window at the dance school across the street is shot in the same way, as is much of the movement down the street after the dancer. Several scenes are repeated in the film, from the opening dance on stage, seen again at the end, to moments experienced first by Benigno and then by Marco.

The music is largely understated, from the classical-sounding music of the dance through the somewhat ominous-sounding music as Benigno and then Marco watch the dancer, acting out a peeping Tom fantasy. Such music prepare the viewer for something worse to happen, though this is an expectation largely unmet as the suggestion of something dark is only that -- a suggestion.