Talk to Her (2002) [Review]

This is my first time watching any of critically acclaimed director Pedro Almodovar’s work, much to the annoyance of my friends. With most of his DVDs sat in my unwatched pile, I reached for Talk to Her and decided to take the plunge into his legendary work.

Talk to Her is the story about two men’s near-obsessive love for women who are currently in comas. It’s not that they have a thing for people in comas, more that they were in love when they were fully alive and well, and now through a couple of tragic, potentially self-inflicted, misfortunes, they are both incapacitated. Marco is the suave author, who travels the world and had fallen for a female bullfighter called Lydia. The other male is Benigno, a male nurse on the coma ward, who tends to his “love”, a dancer by the name of Alicia.

It’s is admirable, borderline impossible, to describe quite how Almodovar is able to convey such intrinsically taboo behaviour and transform it into an unrequited love, wrapped in sympathy for the two male leads. The actions they take are not that of the norm, there is an air of unease throughout the film and yet when it reaches it’s conclusion, we feel not revulsion but empathy. It is a film that appears more as a soap-opera, not just in aesthetic terms, but the content requires us to suspend belief for the most part with respect to the coincidences that take place.

Backed by a rich score from Alberto Iglesias, incredible performances and a storyline that intrigues from the very beginning, Talk to Her has set the bar impressively high as I dive further into Almodovar’s other work. Highly recommended.