Talk To Her is a film about the joy of narration, and about words as a weapon against solitude, disease, death and madness. It is also a film about madness, about a type of madness so close to tenderness and common sense that it barely diverges from normalilty.
We are witness to a dance performed by the Pina Bausch company. Two men are sitting in the auditorium: one is crying, the other is watching. With this symmetry, at first absurd, later logical, the film begins. From the first scene we are aware that two stories will unfold which intersect at the same point of anticipation. For several months the young nurse Benigno has been looking after the young dancer Alicia who fell into a coma after an accident. He has fallen in love with the motionless and silent young woman and he tells her about everything he does. He meets his neighbour from the theatre at the same clinic. Marco is a writer, a friend of the toreador Lydia who is also in a coma after being gored by a bull. Both men are waiting for their women to wake up: one secretly loves a girl who, under normal circumstances, would be out of his reach, the other does not have to conceal his love but he senses it is lost forever. One believes and hopes, the other doubts. Almodóvar moves from one to the other, noting the banal rituals of hospital care, before he takes us to the story’s surprising conclusion.
112 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Pedro Almodóvar
/ Screenplay Pedro Almodóvar
/ Dir. of Photography Javier Agurirresarobe A.E.C.
/ Music Alberto Iglesias
/ Editor José Salcedo
/ Producer Agustin Almodóvar
/ Production El Deseo, s.a.
/ Cast Javier Cámara, Leonor Watling, Darío Grandinetti, Rosario Flores, Geraldine Chaplin, Paz Vega, Fele Martínez, Mariola Fuentes
Pedro Almodóvar (b. l949, Calzada de Calatrava, Mancha) began making shorts on 8mm in the 1970s. One of his first features, Labyrinth of Pasion (Laberinto de pasiones, 1982) provides the key to his future work, an unusual, almost convulsively staged melodrama in which provocation and black humour go hand in hand with pathological emotions: Dark Habits (Entre tinieblas, 1983), Matador (1985), Law of Desire (La ley del deseo, 1986), and the internationally acclaimed Women on the Verge of a Mental Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, 1987) which was nominated for an Oscar and won the Felix European Film Award. Other films: Tie Me Up! (Atame!, 1989), High Heels (Tacones lejanos, 1991), Kika (1993), The Flower of My Secret (La flor de mi secreto, 1995 – award for Best Actress for Marisa Paredes at the 31st KV IFF), Carne trémula (1997). He achieved the height of fame with his All about My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre 1999), for which he won Best Director at Cannes, Best European Film of the Year, a number of other international awards and several national Goya awards.
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