Talk to Her

©brad · January 12, 2003, 01:12:09 PM

Another movie that won't come here. Anyone seen it? Read some incredible reviews. Almodovar is the shit.

Duck Sauce · January 12, 2003, 02:42:00 PM

I have seen it. Its really good, really different. Before I saw it I read a bunch of reviews stating how it mixes a lot or raunchy humor with drama, but I didnt really see too much of that humor. I think I probably could have gotten a little more involved with the movie and it could have been harder hitting. See it if you can.

joke08 · February 19, 2003, 06:43:21 PM

I'm seeing it tomorrow, I'll let you know what i think.
Even though I live in a small New hampshire town, i have somewhat good access to harder to see movies. We have a music hall / art house an hour away and the university of new hampshire shows movies all week long, very cheap.

Jeremy Blackman · February 19, 2003, 06:45:39 PM

I love this movie. I think it's my favorite Almodovar yet.

I agree with Duck Sauce, no raunchy humor. Just a really beautiful movie, in an Almodovar way. You just can't explain why it's so good. It's just below PDL in my mind.

Ghostboy · February 19, 2003, 10:11:31 PM

I don't think it tops All About My Mother, personally, but it's still damn good. His films are so optimistic, even when the characters go through so much pain. And that black and white sequence automatically makes this movie brilliant.....

Duck Sauce · February 19, 2003, 10:48:34 PM

All About My Mother, is probably my least favorite. Live Flesh is my favorite

joke08 · February 20, 2003, 09:23:21 PM

So I just saw it and I really liked it a lot. Very sad, but yes you're right - optimistic. I just really love how you sympathize with Benigno all through the movie. Almodovar really takes his time to set up characters and scenes, which makes the viewer invest in everything.
Gotta see All about my Mother now.

©brad · March 13, 2003, 05:52:56 AM

I'm sorry, I just had to resurrect this thread. I just watched Talk to Her again last night and I was walking on air as the credits rolled- Almodóvar is the man. "Talk To Her" has everything you want in a movie. Almodóvar marries tragedy, melodrama, and comedy effortlessly. It's magic.

Duck Sauce · March 13, 2003, 01:12:06 PM

Quote from: cbrad4d"Talk To Her" has everything you want in a movie. Almodóvar marries tragedy, melodrama, and comedy...

And nudity....

©brad · March 13, 2003, 01:15:50 PM

and it has the biggest rubber vagina in film history.

Gold Trumpet · March 16, 2003, 07:13:10 PM

*spoiler*
Almodovar has a touch and mastery for bring emotion of sadness to the story, but this one is misdirected completely to a character that has little room for caring about in the end, proves to be what all his characteristics were showing him to be. The nurse, the one obcessed with the ballet dancer, had all the trappings of a pyschopath and to just try to feel affection for him was hard for me. I've seen All About My Mother, and realized the talent the director had in bringing concern to offbeat characters, but this is beyond offbeat. I wasn't interested at this guy fulfilling his fantasy that in the backstory, was obsessions of a stalker with a complete problem. Then he is jailed for the alledged raping of the girl, well thing is, it was obvious he did rape her. DNA testing to discover who is daddy to who or impregnated who is completely simple. When he was in jail, I knew he did it. The movie did not. When the tradegy of the male nurse killing himself because he thought the girl was still in a coma or dead and didn't know she was awake and doing well because of him was ludicrous, because the friend wanted to tell him but was told not to and felt terrible for not being able to. If he did tell her, everything about his disease would have manifested to a reality the film didn't want to show. The nurse was a pyschopath, but didn't get to the point where it became completely physically obvious that he could harm and hurt because he never believed he was denied by the one he loved. If jailed and found out she was alive, he would have done all possible to be with be with her, even escaped because he did believe they were meant to be together and right for each other. He would have found her again and tried to be with her in reality, and he would have been rejected. His rejection would have completed the pyschopathic tendencies he had to prolly bring him to murder because the love he had for her and from her was all a delusion for those years.

There was a story in this that could have been done, and that was focusing on the relationship of the friend and admirer of the other girl in a coma with the ballet dancer after her coma. It could have focused on her wariness with being involved with a man who bore so many similarities to the pyschopath so much that he was his closest friend. In this storyline, potential for assumptions and realization of who people really can be would have come across and the friend of the pyschopath, could have colored the situation of him more in making her believe that he was not just a pyschopath, but a man who was overcome with problems too big for him that he lost all touch of reality and was succepted to the person he became in harming her. The sad thing is, the film loses itself in just being about the movie reality and not understanding the simple facts to who its main protaganist really was and what it means. Rapists are just not the people to care about and the director should have known they are not just offbeat characters either. Talented directing and emotion, but all completely misplaced to destroy the entire movie.

~rougerum

joke08 · March 16, 2003, 08:46:11 PM

Trumpet - i disagree with you on most accounts. And i think you could have said all that in a couple of sentences rather than two full paragraphs, including a spoiler.

I think the point of the movie is to feel sympathy, not for benigno, but for the other guy (marco?). He's both struggling with loss and the fact that he has befriended benigno.

and why explain that DNA stuff? isn't all that obvious?

©brad · March 17, 2003, 01:11:28 PM

GT, come on man. Ur interpreting shit too literally. what amazing about the film is that we should really hate benigno for what he did, but we don't.

Gold Trumpet · March 17, 2003, 06:55:03 PM

I don't think I am interpreting too literally. The movie, on a backlevel, does admit that the man is a rapist when the friend visits his grave and speaks of what his raping has accomplished. Thing is, it is still a raping and no way one can get around it to accept it as something good or worthiness of feeling sorry for the guy. I didn't hate the guy completely, but I didn't care for him.

I don't think the movie is for the sympathy of marco really at all. His character sets itself up as a major one but gets reduced to someone we allign ourselves as a protaganist in order to see his friendship with Benigno as something that is for us to care about, that even though he raped a woman, that there is beauty and a warmth of loss for this man who died so tragically. Marco's affairs with the woman he loved are resolved on very minor terms with him reading it in the paper and accepting it but then immediately finding conviction to help his friend out.

My main problem is that the movie knew it was pushing things with trying to get sympathy upon such a person, and it tried its best to really show the man completely in the light of a victim and still saying he did it and something good came out of it, but the fact still remains he is a victim.

Also, on the level of how it even operated with this subject, many parts in the middle dragged on for too long that I became too restless as I felt the story had brought up its themes that these are men who care for the women in coma but just kept on showing their routines. The movie could have pushed its story more in these areas. Everything it was saying was already set up.

~rougerum

RegularKarate · March 23, 2003, 06:00:56 PM

Dead thread for a while, but I finally got to see this film today.

Didn't think it was his best (I still don't know what is his best though), but I did really enjoy the film. Though it let me down in certain aspects.

***SPOILER***I think G.T. is WAY off here. I don't think we're really supposed to gain sympathy for a rapist. I think that Marco is really the one we're supposed to sympathize with. His character is so alone after what he's been through and now his only friend is this Sexually abused sexual abuser. He realizes that what he has done is wrong and probably understands that he should be locked up, but he's still his friend and cares for him all the while.