Talk To Her Proves That "Nothing Is Simple"

Talk to Her

Hable Con Ella (Spanish Title)
Release 2002

Slowly, dramatically, a red stage curtain is drawn on the screen to reveal a stage where seemingly lost female dancers perform a wrenching and psychological dance on a cluttered stage as a frantic male dancer attempts to protect them from bodily harm. And so, Talk to Her, a film written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, begins.

Winner of the Academy Award for both Best Original Screenplay and Best Director in 2003, this film left me with tears in my eyes, and a smile on my face. In short, it managed to draw hopeful promises out of tragic circumstances.

The story, told in a combination of past memories and present occurrences, follows the most unusual love stories of two couples. I say unusual because, for the majority of the film, both Marco and Benigno's love interests, Lydia and Alicia respectively, are in comas. Both men practically live beside the bed of their comatose beloved, and form a conflicted bond of friendship as Benigno schools Marco on the challenges of loving a comatose woman with little truths like “A woman's brain is a mystery, and in this state even more so.”

Benigno, Alicia, Marco, and Lydia take in the scenery.

The film is by no means a realist's attempts to convey raw tragedy. On the contrary, it is surreal in nature, a combination of dreams, performances, and realities. Colors are saturated, music is emphasized, stories are retold. During a climactic moment, Lydia, a matador, performs a slow motion bull fight. We watch Alicia, a dancer, practice her craft daily. All of the characters also attend concerts and ballets, in which they themselves become “viewers” within the film itself.

Lydia performs her final feat as a matador.

However, though these events draw attention to the fact that we, as viewers, are watching a dramatic performance, a dance among the various characters, it doesn't make the story any less compelling. On the contrary, one of the strongest moments of the film was when Benigno finished retelling the plot of a seemingly silly silent movie, and our suspicions are confirmed that he possesses an unnatural obsession with the comatose Alicia, foreshadowing the events that follow.

Alicia is beautiful, even in her perpetual sleep.

Somehow, even in a film which touches on loneliness, guilt, obsession, death, and loss, Almodovar still succeeds in incorporating moments of laugh-out-loud humor in unobtrusive ways. I couldn't help but laugh at the framed photo of Benigno's mother's wedding day photo in which the groom had been unceremoniously cut out, the oversized Betty Boop t-shirt Benigno lounges in (probably a token from his deceased mother), and the recreated silent movie in which a man who has shrunk to just inches in height has a field day with the body of his sleeping, normal-sized lover.

Benigno, watching the outside world from inside his mother's home.

This film, with its vacillations between life and death, love and abuse, friendship and betrayal, bodies and souls, may leave you questioning what makes someone “alive” and what is “normal” in love. However, as Alicia's ballet teacher states as the film ends (with the characters watching a performance, of course), “Nothing is simple. I'm a ballet mistress, and nothing is simple.”

Benigno and Marco, with tears in his eyes, at the opening dance performance.