Xixax Film Forum

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

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.

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.

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.

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.....

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

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.

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.

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

And nudity....

and it has the biggest rubber vagina in film history.

*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

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?

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.

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

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.

rk,
maybe so, but the movie gives much more time to the situation of the rapist then the other to the point that he drvies himself in as feeling to be the main character and point of sympathy. I never got the feeling that the rapist was Marco's only friend or anything beyond the situation that he was a friend to him and similiar in dilemma only with woman friend in coma. If the aim was what you said, the movie was badly structured and should have focused a great deal on the sympathy and how the rapist friend plays off to the side then the other way around. So much time was given to him I was beyond caring about the entire thing.

~rougerum

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa.oscar.go.com%2Fimages%2F200x150%2Fwin_writingO.jpg&hash=470aafb5b110e94909cdbec04fdb06a8b078e72f)

"Oh, my God. I know that to breathe is very expensive tonight, but I have to breathe. Well, first of all, thank you to the members of the Academy, for their generosity. This is, I mean, I don't know, this is really too much. And I would like to read something that is prohibited, but will be very short. You know, of course I dedicate this to El Deseo, to Sony Pictures Classic and all the people that helped me to make this movie. But I also want to dedicate this award to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, respect of human rights, democracy and international legality. All of which are essential qualities to live. This award is also to them and to Spanish cinema and to all of you, because you are the witness of this wonderful moment of my life. Time's up. I'm sorry."

:-D

I loved this movie! Almodovar just kicks ass! I love the way he puts so much art into his movies with his music, the theater performace, the colors, the voice-overs, he's just great.

When I saw the film the first time I liked it a lot, but it was after I left the theater and started thinking about it in the car that I really started getting into the movie. Then I had to go back and watch it again the next day. The same thing happened with to me with PDL, has this ever happened to anyone?

I did feel some sympathy with Begino, and I think teh movie aimed for that.  The things he geos through (what all the characters go through) are universal.  The idea of disconnection, and lost love, and trying to support someone who cares for you very little, it's all themese we understand.

I just caught this over the weekend on DVD. I did like it. However, it's continuing a trend after All About My Mother that I'm not sure I like, though it's probably inevitable: Almodovar is VERY smooth around the edges by now. I don't think he needs to take too many steps further in this direction. I like his sassy, wild, colorful, irreverent films. I really don't think they're any less touching, either. This had enough of a spark to keep it going, and some very beautiful languor that you wouldn't get from the old Almodovar, but still...

-The Benigno character was interesting. Part of him was such a holdover from the old Almodovar days. I think it was Live Flesh that had an extended joke of a rape scene that John Waters would've been proud of... doesn't necessarily quite work in this context, because the surrounding "real," empathetic characters and storylines make it difficult to know how to interpret this sad quasi-rapist.

-It's really an issue of tone. It has the wildly twisted, unpredictable, reckless Almodovar plotting, but it doesn't get matched with what we see and heart. It's a bit of a tonal mess because of restraint and elegance being applied to something not really restrained or elegant.

-The best part of the film, cinematically speaking, was OBVIOUSLY the silent short. That was a beautiful, strange thing worthy of Almodovar and only Almodovar.

Quote from: godardianIt's a bit of a tonal mess because of restraint and elegance being applied to something not really restrained or elegant.

That's exactly one of my favorite things about Almodovar, and probably how I would make a movie...

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: godardianIt's a bit of a tonal mess because of restraint and elegance being applied to something not really restrained or elegant.

That's exactly one of my favorite things about Almodovar, and probably how I would make a movie...

I think it can work beautifully in some cases (frogs raining from the sky right in the midst of despair, suicide, child abuse, broken hearts, for example) but I thought it was the reason Talk to Her didn't entirely work for me. The pacing, the music... something wasn't quite right for the Benigno character, it wasn't an atmosphere that character could really seem right in, and to me, that caused a sort of chain effect where too many things didn't seem to have much life because of it...

I'm always all for ambiguity and contrast, and I'll always cheer anyone who wants to try it, but I just didn't think it was wholly pulled off here.

Yeah, the tone of this movie was so strange to me (but this is coming from someone who hasn't seen any other Almodovar films). I found it so interesting because I honestly didn't know what the director wanted me to feel - I don't think I can think of another film that I've felt that way about to this extent.

The audience I saw it with was laughing so much that it made it even stranger. Seriously: they were finding it hilarious towards the beginning, it was really disturbing, and I could see where it was going, and just couldn't laugh at it. And then you've got the very funny (obviously intentionally so) silent movie, which actually has incredibly serious undertones in relation to the plot. And the performance art/dance lady: I couldn't tell if that was meant to be moving or if it was meant to be a piss-take of that kind of pretentious performance art (I, at the time, decided on the latter). This ambiguity was the beauty of the film for me, but also the thing that pushed me back from it too...

You should definitely see Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I think Almodovar has a very unique mixture of love and affectionate piss-taking towards his characters, but I think it does get harder to tell what he wants in his two last films. He is great, don't get me wrong; I just prefer the earlier stuff. I can appreciate that he doesn't want to be one-note, of course... and I didn't dislike Talk to Her, really. I just didn't think it was very strong.

I hope this doesn't sound racist, but Almodovar is Spanish, and I think that Spanish culture is not as drunk on irony as yours in England or ours here in the US. It's very directly passionate. I actually liken him to Fellini in that sense- color, vividness, and a sense of fun that's mixed right into the sense of sincerity.

I didn't laugh at the silent film, though. I mean, I actually thought it was very beautiful, very strange... yes, a little disturbing, when it comes right down to it.

I think anyone who doesn't speak spanish will miss out on some of the humor in Almodovar's films. I've seen some of his films on vhs with subtitles and sometimes they do a really shitty job with them. A lot gets lost in the translation.

Everytime I watch a foreign film I always wonder how much I'm not getting because I don't know the language, the culture, etc... .

Quote from: EL__SCORCHOI think anyone who doesn't speak spanish will miss out on some of the humor in Almodovar's films. I've seen some of his films on vhs with subtitles and sometimes they do a really shitty job with them. A lot gets lost in the translation.

Everytime I watch a foreign film I always wonder how much I'm not getting because I don't know the language, the culture, etc... .

Especially when the characters speak for 30 seconds and you get a four-word sentence for a subtitle. Or, worse yet, they speak and you get no subtitle at all.

I wish I were more multilingual.

Quote from: godardian

Quote from: EL__SCORCHOI think anyone who doesn't speak spanish will miss out on some of the humor in Almodovar's films. I've seen some of his films on vhs with subtitles and sometimes they do a really shitty job with them. A lot gets lost in the translation.

Everytime I watch a foreign film I always wonder how much I'm not getting because I don't know the language, the culture, etc... .

Especially when the characters speak for 30 seconds and you get a four-word sentence for a subtitle. Or, worse yet, they speak and you get no subtitle at all.

I wish I were more multilingual.

Y Tu Mama Tambien trys its hardest to transcribe the coarse language of the characters....I still don't think they did enough though...but when you know a bit of spanish it helps....

What I feel really bad doing is putting foreign language subtitles on movies in english....Pulp Fiction, esepcially.  Wow...no justice can be done to it.

i have all (or most of) the early almodovar films on tape. the only ones i've seen are labyrinth of passion and women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. they're both awesome. i have to make it my business to watch the others over the summer.

Quote from: bonanzatazi have all (or most of) the early almodovar films on tape. the only ones i've seen are labyrinth of passion and women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. they're both awesome. i have to make it my business to watch the others over the summer.

I've never seen Labyrinth of Passion. Just Women, Live Flesh, Kika, Mother, Law of Desire (?) and this one. Really, a remarkably consistent and large body of work. I do need to see more. I remember when Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! came out, I really wanted to see it. For different reasons than I do now.

yeah, my spanish teacher loaned me all those movies and high heels in around october or november and i never returned them. now it's summer and i still haven't watched any except labyrinth and women. talk to her was good, but it definitely isn't like early almodovar. labyrinth of passion starts out with a gay spanish punk rocker sniffing glue and going, "dios mio! es fantastico!"

i want to be the american almodovar when i get financiers.

Quote from: bonanzataztalk to her was good, but it definitely isn't like early almodovar. labyrinth of passion starts out with a gay spanish punk rocker sniffing glue and going, "dios mio! es fantastico!"

i want to be the american almodovar when i get financiers.

Agreed. And that sounds like exactly my kinda movie; I'll have to seek it out.

I forgot, I have seen High Heels, too.

"Hable con ella" (Talk to her) is in my opinion the best Almodovar's  movie is really good, i think i like more than "Todo sobre mi madre" (all about my mother) this is a really good movie!!!

Sounds pretty cool.  I'll have to check these out.

I saw Talk to Her in the theatres a few months back and really liked it.  I had no interest and seeing it but I went anyways and was really impressed.  It in my top 5 films of the year.

I have heard that the subtitles for the end of "Breathless" don't match very well, anyone know more about this?

To me, Talk to her felt like a pro-rape propaganda reformulated à la typical Almodovar 'touch'.

A real stab in the back to rape victims.& I felt no pity whatsoever when Benigno killed himself. On the contrary...If your comatose daughter, your own flesh and blood was abused, impregnated by a schizo, in real life..You probably wouldn't have any compassion for a guy like Benigno.

Rape is not an act of love. An act of love has to be mutual. No matter how nice Benigno seemed, He's still  a serious degenerated mental case. If I was the father of tht abused girl, I would strangle the guy to death with my bare hands.

There's more honesty in a Larry Clark film than in this cleverly dissimulated rape-drama,cause that's what this film is about. Only Almodovar's film is formulated in such a way, that it is hard not to sympathize with his lead character.  Manipulation at its very best.

rape towards comatose patients exists, and there's nothing romantic about it.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9810/26/patient.abuse/

Talk to her

8/10 for the craftsmanship

0/10 for the message.


Alicia becomes pregnant when Benigno rapes her, and it is the delivery of her child, which dies, that wakes her from her coma. There is something deeply disturbing about this idea, that in the end it takes a rape to free her from her captivity. How far is this from the fantasy that raped women end up enjoying it?
Michael W.philips Jr

i think you misunderstood the film. and i dont think you understand what an "act of love" is either. of course what benigno did was wrong, because it was rape. but that doesnt mean that he didnt love her or meant her any harm, which isnt to say that he shouldve done what he did. no matter what his feelings are, its still rape. which is why he shouldnt of done it.

Quote from: onoffTo me, Talk to her felt like a pro-rape propaganda reformulated à la typical Almodovar 'touch'.

A real stab in the back to rape victims.& I felt no pity whatsoever when Benigno killed himself. On the contrary...If your comatose daughter, your own flesh and blood was abused, impregnated by a schizo, in real life..You probably wouldn't have any compassion for a guy like Benigno.

Rape is not an act of love. An act of love has to be mutual. No matter how nice Benigno seemed, He's still  a serious degenerated mental case. If I was the father of tht abused girl, I would strangle the guy to death with my bare hands.

There's more honesty in a Larry Clark film than in this cleverly dissimulated rape-drama,cause that's what this film is about. Only Almodovar's film is formulated in such a way, that it is hard not to sympathize with his lead character.  Manipulation at its very best.

rape towards comatose patients exists, and there's nothing romantic about it.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9810/26/patient.abuse/

Talk to her

8/10 for the craftsmanship

0/10 for the message.


Alicia becomes pregnant when Benigno rapes her, and it is the delivery of her child, which dies, that wakes her from her coma. There is something deeply disturbing about this idea, that in the end it takes a rape to free her from her captivity. How far is this from the fantasy that raped women end up enjoying it?
Michael W.philips Jr

what a gross post. okay why do u assume the film condones rape, first off, because i don't think it does. what happens to him at the end? yeah thats what i thought. geez i would luv to hear ur opinion on martin scorsese sittin in the back of a taxi cab discussing what a certain firearm would do to a black woman's vaginal area. i guess he's a racist bigot, right?

ur missing the point of the film. u can have sympathy and compassion for a person, even if u don't condede w/ their every action.

Quote from: cecil b. dementedi think you misunderstood the film. and i dont think you understand what an "act of love" is either. of course what benigno did was wrong, because it was rape. but that doesnt mean that he didnt love her or meant her any harm, which isnt to say that he shouldve done what he did. no matter what his feelings are, its still rape. which is why he shouldnt of done it.

You are just saying the same things I've been writing in my previous post.

quote
of course what benigno did was wrong, because it was rape
you also said
its still rape. which is why he shouldnt of done it

So I guess you agree with me on every level. or do you?

don't contradict yourself by saying that  you misunderstood the film
and
i don't think you understand what an act of love is either
or
but that doesn't mean that he didnt love her or meant her harm

you are either following Benigno's logic or you don't.

of course i think you misunderstood the film, you think its pro-rape.

i doubt anyone would disagree with you about rape being wrong.that doesnt mean i agree with your harsh judgements on the character and the point of the film.

Quote from: cecil b. dementedof course i think you misunderstood the film, you think its pro-rape.

i doubt anyone would disagree with you about rape being wrong.that doesnt mean i agree with your harsh judgements on the character and the point of the film.

well, that's what this film is.Because Almodovar doesn't bring any judgments on Benigno. He forces the public to sympathize with him,and there lies the gravitude of this film.

you say:
that doesnt mean i agree with your harsh judgements on the character and the point of the film

harsh judgements? you mean telling the truth? so you're insinuating that, in a way,Benigno's act (of impregnating a comatose patient) is excusable or even tolerable? Would you say the same thing if that girl was your daughter or your wife?

My judgements are not harsh but normal. Benigno is what you'd call an Erotomaniac
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/random/erotomanic.html
sure he wasn't aggressive, but that doesn't gives him the right to penetrate her while she was inconscious. Cause there's no difference between this and date rape.

sigh. where did i say that his acts are excusable or tolerable? good god people cant argue about touchy subjects without putting words in the other persons mouth.

the movie isnt about whether benigno did something wrong or not (which is obvious to everyone except for him), and its not about "forcing" you to "sympathize" with him. stop putting yourself in the shoes of the father and start putting yourself in the shoes of benignos friends and coworkers as well. its about the tragedy he has caused, and how people deal with this. (as you can see, some deny that he even did it).

cecil is right here. did u read my post a few posts up? cuz i'd luv to read ur italicized response to it.

personally i've had enuff of onoff.

Quote from: ©bradcecil is right here. did u read my post a few posts up? cuz i'd luv to read ur italicized response to it.

personally i've had enuff of onoff.

aw, now you're just upset because you fell for that Pro-Rape Propaganda.  which, was really nothing more than an explotation film to begin with.  

i'll bet people in onoffs 'intro to film' class are really blown away by his stunning insight.  maybe we should be more appreciative.

I haven't seen any of Almodovar's work, but all of this heated discussion is urging me to pick up something this guy's done.  I'm also reminded of the Solondz thread, where someone said that they felt manipulated by "Happiness" because they were made to feel pity for the pedophile.  Earlier in this thread someone said they felt forced to feel compassion for the rapist.  I highly doubt this Almodovar fellow is condoning rape; what it does sound like he's doing is forcing you to see new perspectives, to think outside of the box.
Some people, it seems, can't handle this.

on a much much broader scale, saying Almodovar condones rape because he doesn't bring judgement against his character who is a rapist is like saying all action filmmakers condone murder or all romantic comedies condone lying and cheating or all heist movies condone stealing.  the context man, the context.

Well put.  If only I could be so succinct.

the spoiler warnings?

Yeah, I was kinda peeved about that too.  Oh well.  I'll have to see this flick anyway.

this is why i don't read threads about movies i haven't seen (unless it's a movie i don't want to see or don't care about being spoiled).

I'm one of the few here who disliked the film, but I also believe it is far from promoting rapists of any sort. I think the film is just trying to bring the viewer to understanding their situation better and sympathize with them. For me, the film brought me too close to the rapist where I just couldn't care about him. As others saw a lonely man who made some wrong choices, I saw the stereotypes of a rapist and pedophile. I say pedophile because his position of being in power of a woman with no control or movement feels like pedophlia in the way an adult has control over a child. Also, his mannerisms appear very childlike too. I wish the film would have taken the point of view of the friend more and been more tidy in its story. Its one thing to roam through a story with little by way of action, its another to make a 2 hour plus film of that and set much of the action in a random European hospital. The combination of the pacing and focus was just too much for me to even give a shit. On the point of following the friend more, he could identify with the rapist and through his eyes, communicate ideas we can identify with but also, through actions, bring more understanding to the rapist and his situation.

~rougerum

cecil b. demented
sigh. where did i say that his acts are excusable or tolerable?

onoff
you didn't , and I wasn't putting words into your mouth cecil b. I asked you if you were "insinuating" it.  because by saying that you don't agree with my so called "harsh judgements", its all the same to me since my judgements are logical. But you're having a hard time admitting this because you like this film. And yet you never even payed attention to the underlying immorality of almodovar's film. (like 80% of the public).

cecil b. demented
the movie isnt about whether benigno did something wrong or not (which is obvious to everyone except for him).


onoff
Of course not since almodovar deliberately blurred the line between rape and consentuality. That's manipulation and it works.

cecil b. demented
and its not about "forcing" you to "sympathize" with him.

onoff
yes it is, since Benigno is polite, gentle, caring and funny.
Almodovar created Benigno in such a way that it is hard to hate the guy,(even though, deep down, he's just a delusional criminal...because rape is still a crime). And that's what I hate about almodovar's film. That there is compassion for this degenerated mental case.

while visiting imdb.com ,  I noticed that a good majority didn't care about Benigno's deeds (probably not because they are "pro-rape", but simply because they've been fooled into Almodovar's manipulative film.

but there are some exceptions.Here, take a look at this review.
(he likes the film, and admits that it is rape and yet he doesn't think it's immoral.
http://us.imdb.com/CommentsShow?0287467-124
at one point he says: but films like these do not seek our sympathies for wrongful doings of the protagonist. They just sought to shed some light on their frailties behind their obviously sick, twised minds

that's his way to rationalise the whole film. (this guy actually wrote 2 different reviews, in his first review he never even payed attention to almodovar's twisted version of morality. In his 2nd review he acknowledges that there's some kind of controversy but doesn't admits that its wrongful. because as he puts it: "they just sought to shed some light on their frailties" ....Like I should care? He wouldn't say something like that if he would've been sodomised by a "gentle and loving" male nurse."

this other person says:
Perhaps the viewer is not encouraged to condone to the horrible deeds performed by one of the men. In fact, the viewer is not encouraged to take a stand at all. One gets easily sucked in by the fine pictures and the charming music..

I agree here..

the same person also says:
My objection: the film leaves room for too great a variation or reactions -  it is vague. Why is that so bad? Well, because the deeds that are performed, and the attitude shown by the men towards the two women, are such that vagueness can't be anything but a misplaced,corrupt perspective. The viewer is tempted to sympathize with things that one can sympathize with only if one doesn't see their real meaning, their seriousness.

and to me, that's where almodovar's manipulation intervened. Benigno's salacious deeds are inexcusable. Therefore this film is filth, because disguising the graveness of the film's situation is immoral.

cecil b. demented
stop putting yourself in the shoes of the father

onoff
I'm not surprised that you're saying this. Because, obviously you pertinently know that as long as it doesn't concerns you, it isn't important.
But How would you react if that rape victim was your daughter? would you just let it go? As far as i'm concerned,  I'd blow Benigno's head off that's for sure.

cecil b. demented
and start putting yourself in the shoes of benignos friends and coworkers as well

onoff what for? they're scum since they felt pity for a raper. (not all of them If i remember correctly).

cecil b. demented
its about the tragedy he has caused, and how people deal with this. (as you can see, some deny that he even did it.)

onoff
that's what the film really should be about. But the forgivingness towards Benigno is just too omnipresent..but like i said earlier,there's just something wrong about the underlying apology of crime.

right. all rapists are stark raving mad lunatics who indulge in every sin possible.

right, benigno is forgiven at the end of the film.

almodovar has made a movie about a realistic situation with complex, 3 dimensional characters.

and for the record, i didnt even like the film very much. it was okay, but i didnt see what the big deal was. im defending it because i believe youre wrong.

EDIT: i too would like to hear your response to cbrads taxi driver comment

it looks like onoff has a greater problem with the morals of the film than its craftsmanship or storytelling.  perhaps someone he knows has been raped, or he is some sort of religious zealot?

Quote from: themodernage02

Quote from: ©bradcecil is right here. did u read my post a few posts up? cuz i'd luv to read ur italicized response to it.

personally i've had enuff of onoff.

aw, now you're just upset because you fell for that Pro-Rape Propaganda.  which, was really nothing more than an explotation film to begin with.

god u suck.

Quote from: themodernage02i'll bet people in onoffs 'intro to film' class are really blown away by his stunning insight.  maybe we should be more appreciative.

pfft.. if i were in the class i'd be  :sleeping:

alright, reread all of cecils/my posts in this thread carefully and get over it, cuz the argument is done. gt u wonder why i don't really care to argue too much, its b/c arguing is like beating a dead horse when ur dealing with ppl who just dont get it

Quote from: themodernage02it looks like onoff has a greater problem with the morals of the film than its craftsmanship or storytelling.  perhaps someone he knows has been raped, or he is some sort of religious zealot?

yeah tortured, raped and killed.

Quote from: cecil b. demented

almodovar has made a movie about a realistic situation with complex, 3 dimensional characters.


EDIT: i too would like to hear your response to cbrads taxi driver comment

I agree, but I didn't like almodovar's moral (or even his point of view about his character's morals).

ps: what taxi driver comment?

Quote from: rustinglassthe spoiler warnings?

(off subject), I love your avatar (imo underground is one of the best film ever made.)

Quote from: ©brad

Quote from: onoffTo me, Talk to her felt like a pro-rape propaganda reformulated à la typical Almodovar 'touch'.

A real stab in the back to rape victims.& I felt no pity whatsoever when Benigno killed himself. On the contrary...If your comatose daughter, your own flesh and blood was abused, impregnated by a schizo, in real life..You probably wouldn't have any compassion for a guy like Benigno.

Rape is not an act of love. An act of love has to be mutual. No matter how nice Benigno seemed, He's still  a serious degenerated mental case. If I was the father of tht abused girl, I would strangle the guy to death with my bare hands.

There's more honesty in a Larry Clark film than in this cleverly dissimulated rape-drama,cause that's what this film is about. Only Almodovar's film is formulated in such a way, that it is hard not to sympathize with his lead character.  Manipulation at its very best.

rape towards comatose patients exists, and there's nothing romantic about it.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9810/26/patient.abuse/

Talk to her

8/10 for the craftsmanship

0/10 for the message.


Alicia becomes pregnant when Benigno rapes her, and it is the delivery of her child, which dies, that wakes her from her coma. There is something deeply disturbing about this idea, that in the end it takes a rape to free her from her captivity. How far is this from the fantasy that raped women end up enjoying it?
Michael W.philips Jr

what a gross post. okay why do u assume the film condones rape, first off, because i don't think it does. what happens to him at the end? yeah thats what i thought. geez i would luv to hear ur opinion on martin scorsese sittin in the back of a taxi cab discussing what a certain firearm would do to a black woman's vaginal area. i guess he's a racist bigot, right?

ur missing the point of the film. u can have sympathy and compassion for a person, even if u don't condede w/ their every action.

geez i would luv to hear ur opinion on martin scorsese sittin in the back of a taxi cab discussing what a certain firearm would do to a black woman's vaginal area. i guess he's a racist bigot, right?

ur missing the point of the film. u can have sympathy and compassion for a person, even if u don't condede w/ their every action.[/quote][/quote]

your comparison is inadequately chosen. there's a difference between talking about something and doing it.
Benigno is a criminal and nothing more.

Quote from: onoffyour comparison is inadequately chosen. there's a difference between talking about something and doing it.
Benigno is a criminal and nothing more.

u better watch yoself cuz ur about to-

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-all over ur punk ass.

i'll just throw in my two cents.

who gives a shit about the girl's family and the girl? we're not dealing with her in this film. i'm not saying "who cares about rape victims," i'm saying, in this film, what her and her family goes through isn't of consequence, because they are not the main characters. benigno and the marco are. for you to ask me something like "what would you do if this would happen to your daughter" is irrelevant, because that's not who we're dealing with in the movie. benigno gets rightly punished for what he did, and because of the guilt he had, he kills himself. benigno is not a bad man in the film, he is just psychologically impaired. he has lots of mental issues stemming from the relationship he had with his mother. i'm not saying what he did to alicia is right, but the way the film plays out, it's hard not to feel bad for benigno because he is messed up and doesn't know that what he did to alicia was wrong. he is a very damaged character. of course i feel bad for alicia as well, but she isn't the character that we're dealing with. we're not looking at her and her family as the main characters because that is not who the story is about thus far. it is benigno's journey. by saying that the audience should hate benigno and embrace alicia's family is like saying that for the last third of the movie taxi driver (i use this as an example because it has been brought up before), we should switch perspectives from travis bickle's point of view to that of the senator or cybill shepard's character. it just wouldn't make sense. yes, travis bickle is a bad man and cybill and the senator are being victimized by him, but we're not switching perspectives simply because it makes the audience more comfortable.

oh, fuck it, just argue with the points i already made and i'll get back to you.

We're reading too much into this. Feels like a Do the Right Thing debate.

I don't think Almodovar is defending rape, but I do think he's defending Benigno. Or at least trying to understand him.

I think Almodovar, with this movie, is speaking against the kind of automatic dehumanization that Onoff has done throughout this thread.

The whole point is that it's not that simple.

in calling "Talk to Her" a pro-rape propaganda film and saying how it's very manipulative and successful in its techniques, one has to ask a very easy question--
how many rapes have occured since "Talk to Her" that are inspired by the film?  was there some kind of international coma-patient-humping craze that swept the hospitals everywhere in which the patient's loved ones were only trying to revive them?  or even, how many people who have seen the film and finally decided that rape is okay?
nobody ever tries to establish the realm of Talk to Her in a real universe, with the laws of the real universe.  It's about a matador getting gored and a ballerina in a coma and the two men.  There is a surrealistic silent sequence in the film, and parts of the film were plotted like melodrama.  At no point was the film attempting to bring insight into rape with the conclusion that it's a fun activity that all should give a chance at least once in his lifetime.
secondly, the "rape" only occurs out of intense love and care, which no judge will buy in the real world but once again, and this is how sad your argument is because I'm about to break this simple fact to you: TALK TO HER ISN'T IN THE REAL WORLD (all who agree say: "no shit.)  This is a universe where an intense love matters.  It's like a risque version of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty--do those stories promote "unauthorized kisses" which can qualify as sexual harrasment which may or may not lead to rape?  Or are they fairytales that insist love triumphs over coma/ death?
You moralizing over something that doesn't exist in this world is a knee-jerk reaction, and I pity you a little for that.  it's one thing to have a film ruined by the filmmakers' own inadequecies, it's another to have it ruined by the viewer's sense of self-righteousness.

lastly--so Scorsese gets off easy just because his characters don't "do" what they believe?  So if Benigno only talks about raping someone you'll be able to enjoy the film a lot more?

Quote from: onoff

Quote from: rustinglassthe spoiler warnings?

(off subject), I love your avatar (imo underground is one of the best film ever made.)

thanks, yours is cool too

I wonder why a certain class of Americans can be so self-righteously dumb? Anywhere in the world, a discussion about a movie like Almodovar's 'talk to her' would, of course, touch the issue of rape, but never get to the point where it completely blurs all other interesting discussions the movie may ensue. It's like they'd rather look at Almodovar's hands than to where they're pointing at.
Such dumb self-righteous behaviour can only stem from this judeo-christian-protestant i'll-make-the-world-right attitude (or right as I think it should be).
My suggestion to this people: goto Iraq and make the world right. The body-bags are still coming and there's gotta be one with your name on it.

Who the fuck do you think you are?

This is your first post?

Make it your last.

Hey mariogiuliani, do you enjoy walking into the holy cracks of a woman's body as you shrink into oblivion? That kind of sadistic pleasure can only be had by taking a houseguest to the local McDonalds. Do you complain to waitresses when they put too much beer in your ice? You're the type who walks into a Burger King and asks for a Big Mac because you don't know the difference. Do you know the difference though? Could you explain the difference? I'm sure you can't, so I'll explain it to you: the Big Mac is a piece of trash with two soy-product patties and too much sauce.. it's too small and it comes in a container which is also too small, so it's impossible to hold without getting messy. The Whopper on the otherhand, on a good day, is cooked to perfection. 100% groundbeef and flame broiled. The perfect size, with the cheese melted and all the ingredients coming together. Maybe a bit too much mayo but you have to ask for them to go light on the mayo. On a bad day, it's still pretty good. I took a good friend of mine to BK and it was a bad day, and the man never forgave me. He refused to walk into BK ever again. Are you that man?

haha I saw a body bag with your name on it, so I unzipped the bag and took a dump on your dead face, and even though your judeo-christian-protestant-WASP corpse is decomposing, it still looked like you felt that hot load and cringed.  And then suddenly I recall the fact that I speak several more languages than English and remember reading reviews in French, Spanish, and my home tongue Chinese, addressing specifically the issue of rape in the movie Talk to Her.  I wish I could show them to you but you're dead and you've got what I had for dinner last night (rice crackers and popcorn) on your face.

ps. oh yeah, but you and onoff would still make a great couple.

Quote from: mariogiulianiJudeo-Christian milk!?!?  I drink liberal milk.

Finally got to see this last night.  Quite enjoyable and unique.  I tend to look at this movie differently than most people here do.  I think for some odd reason, the evidence of who the rapist was points to Marco.  He had more motivation to do it.  Hear me out: Lydia was going to break things off with Marco before she was put into a coma.  Marco is the much more lonely person.  He had access to her as well.  Benigno was abused and lonely, yes, but he also cared too much for Alicia to hurt her.

The two most damning things, I think, were 1) the conversation between Benigno and Marco in the jail.  What I took from this was the composition of the shot of Benigno on the telephone.  It's something I don't think anything has ever pointed out before, but it's really important.  Through the reflections the glass give off, you see the reflection of one man superimposed on the other.  I don't think this is a happy accident.  It shows two things: their closeness, and the fact that the two are almost interchangable.  It implies that Marco should be the one behind bars, and in some sad way, Benigno was mixed up in Marco's inability to forget about the women from his past.  Also, at the end of the film, like clockwork, another subtitle comes up as Marco looks back at Alicia while in the theatre: "Marco y Alicia."  I think that's really telling, right there, in another disturbing way.

The point is, I don't think it matters who the rapist was.  Maybe it was neither man.  That wasn't really the point at all.  The movie was really about the unfortunate loneliness these men were both suffering through.  And for that, it did a great job.  Oh yeah, and the silent film sequence was truly one of the most memorable and humorous I've ever seen.  It was also quite funny as I saw it with a college crowd, and I remember so many girls busting out laughing, and a couple a few rows ahead of me wondering to themselves "what's this film rated?!" ***½ (8/10)

I finally watched this tonight, and I think it's Almodovar's best film; a brilliant exploration of loneliness and obsession. To me, it seemed a more 'mature' work of filmmaking for him. I noticed a more attention to camerawork and technique than I've seen in his previous work from what I can remember (granted, I haven't seen those for in a while).

*SPOILERS throughout*

Saw this movie yesterday.  I've read the interesting comments throughout this thread, so I thought I would give my two cents.  About Benigno, I believe that we were supposed to understand his situation and the events that happened in his life that lead him into a very lonely lifestyle.  To see someone develop such love for someone who cannot love in return was heartbreaking and a bit unnerving.  The entire rape incident really disturbed me.  I realize the audience was to see more of Benigno's perspective and not Alicia's, but I couldn't help but think of how horrible that would be to wake up and find out someone violated you in such a way. I understand that the friendship between Marco and Benigno was supposed to be the centerpeice at that point (and it was very interesting and well done), but that thought was always at the back of my mind, which kind of disconnected me from the film. I did not feel any sympathy for Benigno being in jail for what he did, but I did feel that he had such a desperate loneliness that effected his grip on reality. Anyways, with all this talk about the rape incident, I think what is being neglected is the interesting background relationship between Lydia and Marco.  The scenes with those two were some of the best moments in this film.  The fact that she can be a bull fighter and be deathly afraid of snakes was interesting, and a little amusing.  And how Marco just couldn't get over his old girlfriend and talks about her to Lydia all the way to her last bull fight gave him so much guilt and grief after the accident.  All the characters were very compelling and completely original.  I didn't enjoy this film as much as most of the people who posted here, but I could appreciate it's originality and compelling filmmaking.

Lemme just say that this is just a great great movie. If you see it again, you'll like it even better. It's that kind of movie.