Main Cast: Javier Camára, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, Geraldine Chaplin
Release Year: 2002
Country: ES
Run Time: 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Pedro Almodóvar follows his international success All About My Mother with an offbeat drama that explores the friendship of two men brought together under unusual but strangely similar circumstances. Benigno (Javier Camára) is a male nurse whose apartment overlooks a dance studio run by Katerina (Geraldine Chaplin); he often sits on his balcony and watches one of Katerina's students, Alicia (Leonor Watling), and he finds himself becoming infatuated with her. When Alicia is severely injured in an auto accident that leaves her in a coma, Benigno discovers she has been admitted to the hospital where he works, and he spends his days caring for a woman he now deeply loves but has barely met. Marco (Darío Grandinetti) is a journalist who was assigned to interview Lydia (Rosario Flores), a well-known female bullfighter whose on-the-rocks romance with another toreador, "El Niño de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernández), has made her the focus of the tabloid press. During Marco's interview with Lydia, he goes out of his way to treat her kindly, and she appears to return his attention. During the bullfight which follows, Lydia is gored by the bull, and is now in a coma; Marco is certain his interview broke her steely concentration, and he spends most of his days at the hospital, convinced her injuries are his fault. Alicia and Lydia are both housed in the same ward of the same hospital, and in time Benigno and Marco become close friends, bonding in their shared devotion to women who cannot return their affection. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
As a filmmaker who has built a career out of creating stellar roles for actresses, director Pedro Almodóvar has taken on some bold challenges for Talk to Her. A bizarre love story of a technically nonexistent relationship, it doesn't allow for easy spiritual redemption. Simple melodramatic terms are avoided when the central female characters are rendered unresponsive but ever-present. One of them, Lydia (Rosario Flores), is even positioned in horrifying bullfighting scenes that capture all the gruesome sadness and reality of the ultramasculine sport. When the would-be leading ladies drop out into comas, the two men are forced to deal with all the messy and troubling aspects of relationships -- or lack thereof. Acting as the film's anchor, the balding and muscular Marco (Dario Grandinetti) cries intermittently throughout the film, a small detail that seems almost revolutionary in this context. With a bravery and steadfast kindness, he forges a friendship with the deeply troubled Benigno (Javier Camara) whose mental illness leads the film into several dark places, including a wildly cinematic fantasy construction of sexual exploration. By contrast, the freshly lit scenes of tenderness with crisp white cotton garments belie the destructiveness Benigno is capable of. However disturbing the situation eventually becomes, these scenes speak volumes about the power of devotion as a motivator. Several side characters provide a background for the themes dealt with in the central narrative -- that of the power of faith to renew and transform. But like many human relationships, the result isn't clearly defined, leaving a confusing mess of conflicting emotions. Also, like the film's many well-staged modern dance sequences, the power lies in the constant interplay of reasoning between logic and belief. Ambiguity is one of the film's best assets, leaving the viewer with plenty of moral space for existential questioning. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
The film's themes include the difficulty of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, secrets and infidelity, and the persistence of love beyond loss.
In 2005, Time magazine film critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included Talk to Her in their list of the All-TIME 100 Greatest Movies.
Benigno (literally meaning "benign" or "harmless" in Spanish) and Marco cross paths when they both attend the same concert dance, only to eventually meet again at a private clinic where Benigno works. There, he is the personal nurse and caregiver for a patient named Alicia, a beautiful dance student who lies in a coma, and with whom Benigno has become obsessed. Marco, a journalist and travel writer, is at the clinic to visit his girlfriend Lydia, a famous matador who is also comatose after being gored by a bull. As the men stand vigil over these women, the story unfolds in flashback and flash forward motifs, telling the lives of the four characters with respect to their relationships. Marco leaves Lydia when her previous lover informs him that they had reunited a month before Lydia's accident.
Marco leaves Spain for Jordan to write a tourist guide, where he reads in a newspaper that Lydia has died in her coma.
Meanwhile, Benigno is accused of raping Alicia, who is discovered to be pregnant, believing their contact to be love. Benigno is sent to prison in Segovia, and a short time later he ingests a large quantity of pills to try to put himself into a coma, thus reuniting himself with Alicia; but he dies of an overdose. Ironically, Alicia wakes up during or sometime after childbirth. The baby is stillborn, and Alicia begins rehabilitation to recover her walking ability. The film ends with Marco, sitting two rows in front of Alicia, turning around and smiling at her for a moment, and then turning back around.
