Film Reviews

Talk To Her

• Rating:
• Director: Pedro Almodovar
• Starring: Dario Grandinetti
• Details: Spain / 112 mins / (15PG).

After the success of the Oscar nominated All About My Mother, Pedro Almodovar returns with another gloriously rendered, insightful offering with Talk to Her, ranking amongst the director's most fully realised work to date. In traditional Almodovar style, the story is both simple and complex. Essentially the story of two men who are in love with women in comas, much of Talk to Her takes place in a hospital. It's here that gentle but obsessive male nurse Benigno (Javier Camara) attends to Alicia, a dancer in a coma for some four years. Benigno meets Marco (Dario Grandinetti), a macho travel writer whose bullfighter girlfriend, Lydia (Rosario Flores), was gored by one of her charges. Slowly the two men begin to build up a relationship of sorts. This is but a brief summarisation of Talk to Her as the director constantly shifts expectations and toys with the conventions of the narrative. That said, his main preoccupation here seems to be the male psyche and what men are capable of when it comes to love. As usual, his writing is immaculate, the characters are beautifully etched and hugely sympathetic, lending them an air of genuine tenderness that few other directors could hope to emulate.

Review by Garreth Murphy