Movies into Film.com
Talk to Her
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Spain, 2002
Rosario Flores with director Pedro Almodóvar on the set of Talk to Her (Sony Pictures Classics)
As Lydia, statuesque and regal Rosario Flores looks magnificent in her matador regalia, a handsome coat of gold embroidery on crimson. Her somewhat mannish face offset by a voluptuous mane of hair that she coils imperiously for bullfights, Ms. Flores invites comparison to both Margaret Hamilton and the Seattle cabaret singer Julie Cascioppo. When she waves her cape in the ring, Lydia conjures up strength, power, and tantalizing ambiguity. Casting Flores in this role was the smartest move Pedro Almodóvar made in Talk to Her; killing her off in an unwelcome Forster-like twist a half-hour on was the least so.
This wildly overrated Spanish film turns out to be a hospital saga of women in comas and men who might as well be. As with Almodóvar’s earlier (and much worse) Law of Desire, boy-boy psychosis reigns supreme, and—lucky us—we’re treated to smarmily ironic set pieces wherein Lydia’s emotionally needy boyfriend, a 40-ish stubble sporting egghead journalist, becomes over fond of a sycophantic gay male nurse, and the men make moo cow eyes at each other. Elvis Mitchell, processing words for the New York Times, declares: “…when it’s over, the realization of how much the movie means to you really sinks in; you can't get it out of your heart.” Nor can Talk to Her be pried from the pit of the stomach.
Accentuating the positive, there’s a fine, understated performance by Geraldine Chaplin as a ballet mistress, and an appearance by the mesmeric Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, heard all too fleetingly in concert. – NPT
January 2003
Movies into Film
© N.P. Thompson, 2004
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com