Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bad Education” is a modern film noir with a passion for a colour and flamboyance with eroticism, murder mystery and sexual abuse. The mystery movies have a potent fall of getting in to the reasoning for the murder or crime and thereby the part which deals with the emotions becomes a restless portion to move on with the film. But “Bad Education” does not begin with the notion of a mystery plot (despite the noir toned titles).Enrique (Fele Martínez) is a film director in perusal of strange but strong imageries of tragedy in newspaper. He gets a visit from his school friend Ignacio (Gael García Bernal) in the zest of pursuing his acting career through Enrique. He says he has stopped writing but have a story written couple of years ago. He also informs that one half is inspired from their childhood experience.
Enrique reads the story titled “The Visit” and inside it has the story of transsexual Zahar (played again by Gael García Bernal), who really is Ignacio. In developing circumstances Zahar gives a visit to their literature teacher, Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and hands a story telling that his brother Ignacio wrote it and blackmails him. That story tells the child hood of Ignacio (Nacho Pérez) and Enrique (Raúl García Forneiro). The screenplay within a film and in that screenplay is a story shuffles on further challenging us to remember the characters but is not a boasting from Pedro. It is homage and acts the noir part planned on into it.
Most of the story is narrated by some one else. And one part is a film being made by it. Pedro wants to deceive us on having a suspicion on what to believe. But believing the stories is the only way to put the film together. On the other hand the emotional turmoil is different. The multiple portrayal of Ignacio resonates that. And how rich are the colours that it is the image the character of Enrique the passionate director pictures about the horrific weird deaths he reads in the paper. And the shots of agile movements are silhouetted with the elegance of bright colour over a sunny day.
Pedro makes us to grasp the child sex abuse and the murder in such a light tone. There is no question about the sympathy in the child being threatened and blackmailed from a teacher and a religious priest but when the real murder is revealed and the story amounting to that is told, we are in a state of indifference. The film is poetry of indifference and it slips through the narrow gaps of film noir, eroticism and emotional imbalance by the society on being harsh on these men.
Bernal is the star in the film enacting three or more characters. He is comfortable and convincing in each role and we forget the real him at the end of it. The screenplay is the collage of various parts of a person’s life shaped by the injustice and cruelty in childhood spiraling into multiple paths with the person and the surrounding people. Pedro’s “Talk to her” talks about men finding friendship through the women they love. This film circles in the intermingling homoeroticism and emotional crisis of men.
More than the non-acceptance and phobic pressure of the system, the internal problems causes rifts among them. Everything stems from the pedophilic priest and its ill effect on a child’s growth. But that is a layer below the main plot of these different men observing and using each other to get what they want. The result though is untrusting relationship with a love postponed to be only destroyed before its conception.
Pedro’s film “Volver” and this one has the chemistry of similar film narration. It has a casualness to handle the gravest act into a simple element but has the calamity of its gravity and emotion intact. In “Talk to Her” it had the same but its characters cannot be taken as that light hearted and casual. Here though the men in the film are all a victim some how or other at various points in the film. The film is interesting, grasping and flamboyant. “Bad Education” is a clever murder mystery with subject matters of sexual abuse, mystical identities and the passion for writing screenplay.
No comments:
Post a Comment