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Jones reviews "Talk to Her" directed by Pedro Almodovar.

As entertaining and emotionally rich as All About My Mother but far less eager to please, Pedro Almodovar's new Talk to Her pulls off quite a singular feat. It gives us a bounteous array of individuals, each one defined in vivid strokes, and at the same time quietly conjures up a portrait of humanity as one great throbbing, touching, danger-courting, restlessly shifting organism. The Variety reviewer qualified his admiration with the gentle complaint that Almodovar, "as is often the case," doesn't achieve "full emotional impact." By my reckoning, he achieves it many times over, and Talk to Her is such a quicksilver experience that its overall impact is still hitting me.

In order to discuss the film at greater length, I'm going to have to give away more of the plot than I'd like, so you may want to turn the page and re-visit this article (or not) when the film is released this fall. Almodovar's narrative puzzle is yet another thing of beauty in and of itself. Talk to Her is principally about two men who wind up sitting next to each other at a Pina Bausch performance. One is an Argentinian travel guide writer named Marco (Dario Grandinetti) and the other is a male nurse named Benigno (Javier Camara). In the film's opening moments, Benigno steals a series of bemused glances at his neighbor: the writhing contortions of Bausch and her onstage partner have brought tears to Marco's eyes. Perhaps Benigno is just studying this man who cries openly, perhaps he's admiring him, perhaps having a laugh at his expense. In any case, as always with Almodovar, the expression of emotion is treated as an event worthy of his (and our) rapt attention. It's a very funny moment and an oddly moving one as well, thus setting the tone for what's to come.

Marco will awake the next morning and begin his day with a TV talk show, on which a Spanish Sally Jessie Raphael (a hilarious cameo by Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown's Chus Lampreave) makes a game attempt to wrench a romantic confession from her guest, a bullfighter named Lydia (singer Rosario Flores). The bewitched Marco tracks down this stunning, neurotic creature on the pretext of doing a Sunday magazine profile, gives her a ride home and slays the snake she finds in her kitchen, then drives her to a hotel and offers to sleep on her couch. She makes a move and he bids her a chaste goodnight, which Almodovar follows with a sweetly mysterious ellipsis.

Benigno will begin the next morning on the job. The first time we see him, it's in close-up: he's chatting away to a beautiful, sleeping young woman with her head wrapped in a towel, as he gives her a manicure. He's telling her about the handsome man he sat next to last night at the performance. Soon, we realize that we're in a hospital and that the woman is in a coma, and the way that Almodovar tips us off to her condition is the first of many resounding echoes of that opening Bausch piece. Alicia (the lovely Leonor Watling) is carefully undressed, her body put on display for the camera in a manner that's half-clinical, half-- devotional. She is then scrubbed and redressed. It's midway into the film before we learn exactly how Benigno has gotten this job, and why he's devoting such obsessive care to Alicia. By which time Lydia has been injured in the ring (her pre-fight ceremonial dressing is a sensual/cinematic heartstopper), begetting another chance meeting between Marco and Benigno and the beginning of their unlikely yet enduring friendship.

Almost every character in Talk to Her channels his/her emotional turmoil into physical enterprises like bullfighting or dancing. Or else they project their desire onto people both animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious. The director and his cast work quite a few wonders here, not least of which is a party on a summer night in which a group of friends watches Caetano Veloso sing "Cucurrucucu," a scene so delicate it appears to hover in mid-air. But the greatest miracle of Talk to Her is what Camara and Almodovar pull off together with the character of Benigno. This warm, cheerful child-man, half-way between Chayefsky's Marty and Hitchcock's Norman Bates, may be the film's wisest character. He's the most complex innocent in movies since Sheen and Spacek in Badlands, but he's more of a real person. And his creator never betrays him-there's not so much as a hint of judgment passed on Benigno. In The Rules of the Game, when Jean Renoir's Octave exclaims that everyone has their reasons, he meant for the statement to ring true in a stictly social sphere. Almodovar is getting at a more eternal truth. Through this beautifully realized character, he's implying that every act of love, no matter how apparently misguided, is worth our attention and respect. It's a stab at understanding, the most we can all hope for. -KENT JONES

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