Cinemashrink Says
"Not the usual flashy Almodovar cutting up cultural stereotypes of gender identity and sexuality with a lot of high-handed dark humor, Talk To Her probes slowly and deeply into the emotional relationship between two men who love women who are half-dead."
Reviewed by Jane Alexander Stewart, Ph.D.
Talk To Her begins with a dance performance of two women who, in abject misery, run into walls of granite, collapsing into stylized postures, stiffened by their fall. A man in an undertaker's black suit races in front of them moving chairs out of their way so they won't stumble or hurt themselves. There is no mistaking the message of German choreographer, Pina Bausch. She thrusts her view of the inevitable dead-end for women living in a man's world upon an audience without reservation.
As the women dance, two men who do not know each other sit side by side in the audience. Tears slide down the face of Marco (Dario Grandinetti) who has been a man attempting to remove obstacles from the path of one woman. He's about to do it for another. The man who sits next to him, Benigno (Javier Camara), notes Marco's tears as odd but says nothing. The men sit next to each other as strangers, observers of a dance representing a circumstance that will soon bring them together as friends.
Marco is a travel writer, a independent man of the world who seemingly has no home, family or friends. He has a relationship with a woman that works well only when they travel, never at home and never in any ordinary way. Benigno is a nurse, a man who in his early life devoted himself to an invalid mother and is presently devoting himself to a young woman in a coma. He has never traveled, living life straight from his imagination -- and magazines. Marco can kill a snake with a baseball bat but cannot speak softly or caress a woman with love. Benigno can attend to the most intimate details of the female body but cannot ask a woman for a date. Benigno is a man so soft he carries a childlike quality of being still unformed while Marco is a man whose tears fall down his face without expression.
Benigno loves Alicia (Leonor Watling), a ballet dancer who has smitten him without her knowledge. As she learned her craft from a master teacher (Geraldine Chaplin) in a loft with large glass windows across from his apartment, Benigno watched her, captivated by the movement of her lovely body. Then she disappears. He finds her comatose in the hospital where he works. She was hit by a car shortly after he surreptitiously invaded her apartment, stole a hair clip and frightened her as she stepped out of the shower in a bath towel. Now, able to realize in her near-death state a sweet closeness he could not have with her in life, he devotes himself to caring for her body and soul. Then he sees a movie, The Shrinking Lover, which inspires him to fulfill a dream of merging with Alicia only to discover that it results in a separation tantamount to death. The consequences of the merger, however, are far reaching, allowing life and love to blossom in an unexpected way.
Marco falls in love with a female bullfighter, Lydia (Rosario Flores), as he watches her being bullied by an interviewer on TV to reveal the details of being jilted by a famous male bullfighter, El Nino. Marco pursues Lydia ostensibly as a subject for a magazine article, attempting to rescue her reputation and, in the process, rescues her from a very real snake in her house. Just after he declares his love for her, she is stilled by a bull into a coma. Whatever Marco hoped to come from his love for the masculinized female matador who loves another man, it ends up with him sitting silent beside her bed. His tears (again) speak of a compassion for which he has no words. Then Marco discovers that, unbeknowst to him , El Nino and Lydia reconciled just before she was gored into oblivion. Marco excuses himself to El Nino, returning to his life as a wanderer, never talking to anyone until he discovers that Lydia has died and Benigno has been jailed as a suspected rapist of Alicia.
When the two men meet in the hospital, Benigno recognized Marco as the man who cried at the theater. Now they share common ground; each cares for a woman who ran into a wall just after they fell in love with them. Benigno counsels Marco to talk to Lydia but he can't. Benigno, a sweet but strange mother-bound man succumbs to his affection for the lithe feminine dancer, wanting something he can't fathom and accomplishing something far, far from the criminal charges brought against him. When Marco visits Benigno in jail, he keeps quiet about the fate of Alicia but learns there is a large price to be paid for silence. Then, and only then, does Marco break his macho stance, finally following Benigno's instructions to talk about what he feels and knows.
Perhaps Talk To Her could be a fairy tale that goes something like Thomas Mann's Transposed Heads.
Once upon a time, there was a young child-like man named Benign Benigno who dreamed of a Sleeping Beauty awakening to his touch as he washed her hair and dressed her in a beautiful long white gown. He dreamed of living happily ever with her after in a perfect bedroom he'd seen in a magazine. Benign Benigno has a good friend named Macho Marco, a lone ranger type who likes to rescue women who have been badly mawled by fate and fortune. The men are searching for the secret that will awaken a woman's love and make her theirs forever.
Then, one day, they meet a wizard named Almodovar who gives them direction. Benign Benigno will have to act. Macho Marco will have to feel. If Benign Benigno could be a little stronger and Macho Marco a little softer, perhaps they could wake up a Sleeping Beauty. And this is what happens. Benign Benigno and Macho Marco transpose; theoretically, Benigno dies and gives Marco his feelings. Marco keeps Benigno's feelings alive by loving Sleeping Beauty, the woman Benigno has adored all along. I told you Almodovar was a wizard.
The newly vulnerable Marco (reminiscent of Benigno) moves into Benigno's house, looking down into the same dance studio where Benigno first sighted his Sleeping Beauty. Miraculously, he finds a vision of Sleeping Beauty in the studio too, exercising under the tutelage of her fairy godmother. Marco can hardly believe his eyes. It's not long until he's romancing Beauty with his newfound feelings and even though the princess remains under the watchful, protective eye of her fairy godmother, a happy ending can be felt coming. In the end, the princess and Marco sit in a theater separated by an empty chair suggestive of Benigno's absent presence. She gazes upon a man fit for a woman's dreams -- a man able to speak his feelings, still hardy enough to kill a snake.
In the fairy tale's final performance, Pina Bausch gives Almodovar's women a new dance, one where they pass gently over the hands of men who pass them along in colorful dresses while they sing a lively, seductive song. It's not your ordinary fairy tale. It's not about a prince rescuing a princess from a death-like sleep but a tale of healing the inner split between a man and his feelings that allows him to speak his heart -- and dance the dance of love with a woman.
Talk To Her should leave you a bit puzzled, looking beyond the doors of convention for answers about men and masculinity that are barely explored, not easily expressed. But you should not be lost for an answer about the need for men to relate emotionally to one another. It's 'yes'.
Directed and Written by Pedro Almodovar
Performances by Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watting, Rosario Flores, Geraldine Chapman
