Talk to Her Review – A Charmer

On a planet teeming with 6 billion plus people, the story possibilities can’t but be truly astounding.

Endless permutations of love, crime, betrayal, devotion, redemption, hunger, passion, poverty et al, right?

Yet, our Bollywood mongrels shovel out the most dreary, soporific stories at moviegoers.

Why? Oh, why do these pustulating leproid c*nts do that.

Never ceases to surprise us.

Really.

What do these scatophagous mongrels feed on. Dung, what else!

Or have the Bollywood moguls decreed that the rabble deserve only the crap dished out to them.

Be that as it may, we rented the Spanish language film Talk to Her from Netflix as an escape from the dull tedium of Indian films.

By golly, what a fine selection it turned out to be.

Classy Movie
Folks, tis’ true that Talk to Her is a love story at one level.

But the movie is also so much more than a love story.

Infinitely more.

* It’s a strange, albeit moving tale of passionate devotion.

* It’s ultimately a heart-wrenching tragedy.

* It’s a story with twists enough to keep you engrossed.

Talk to Her is one of those rare movies where you don’t for a moment believe you are watching a movie – although, of course, you are plonked on a sofa in front of the big-screen TV crunching into the South Indian mixture while sipping on a glass of White Russian.

How we heard of Talk to Her is impossible to recollect in our current soused state.

Hell, does it even matter how we heard of this fine movie written and directed by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar.

Offbeat Story
The harvest of a fecund imagination, the Talk to Her story here is not one of those irritating, silly love stories chockablock in Indian films.

Au contraire, the setting here is a hospital where a ballet dance student Alicia (Leonor Watling) lies in a coma after a car accident on a rainy day.

The comatose Alicia is tended to devotedly by the male nurse Benigno Martin (Javier Cámara) with a devotion that’s surreal.

Washing her hair, cleaning her menstrual blood, massaging her skin, putting special boots on her feet to prevent them from getting twisted, reading out aloud, Benigno does all that and more for the beautiful comatose girl.

Hell, Benigno even talks to her. Of course, it’s a monologue because the girl has been in a coma for years with no sign of any recovery.

To the same hospital comes Marco Zuluaga (Darío Grandinetti) after his girl friend Lydia (Rosario Flores), a matador, after her innards are ripped out by a bull.

Lydia too lies in a coma with her cerebral cortex completely destroyed by the bull.

The meeting between Marco and Benigno sets the stage for director and writer Pedro Almodóvar to take us into a flashback into the lives of the men and their respective encounters with Alicia and Lydia.

As the lover ditched by a fellow matador in favor of a younger girl, Rosario Flores casts a regal figure and more so in the bull-fighting arena.

Javier Cámara, Rosario Flores and Darío Grandinetti are fine actors who bring life to their roles.

To see Benigno tend to Alicia with a solicitude of a dear one is to delight in a solid performance.

And then one day Alicia misses her periods.

Well, when a girl misses her period what is the usual explanation?

The story takes on greater urgency now, eventually marching on to its ultimate tragic denouement but not before another surprising twist.

Oscar Winner
Now, don’t tell us you schmucks are surprised that Talk to Her won the Oscar for the Best Original Screenplay in 2002.

8 Responses to "Talk to Her Review – A Charmer"

  1. 1012900   July 7, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    Hey, watch Shutter Island if u haven’t already. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Ben Kingsley among others, it’s a wonderful psychological thriller.

    I watched it yesterday with two of my friends. The acting is top notch, the screenplay amazing and the photography is mindblowing.

    Btw, Don’t check out wikipedia if you plan to watch it. The movie is loaded with neat twists and the ending came as a real surprise. We were able to partially guess the ending though.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    We’ll watch Shutter before Inception releases since Leonardo DiCaprio features in both films.

    No, we won’t read Wiki. BTW, we’ve seen the trailer of Shutter Island a few times in the theater.

    Rewatching Dark Knight tomorrow.

  2. 1012900   July 7, 2010 at 11:12 pm

    Checked out the trailer of Inception. Looks interesting. The special effects too look great.

    Wonder how hollywood comes out with such innovative scripts while our bozos stick on to the same old trash.

    I’m definitely gonna watch Inception in the theater if it releases here.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    Inception is set to release here on July 16, two days after Nicolas Cage’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

  3. chennaiarun2007   July 8, 2010 at 1:14 am

    offtopic:

    Watched the films “Click” starring Adam Sandler and “Dark Blue” starring Kurt Russel yesterday.

    Of the two,I saw Click with high expectations that it would be a good LOL kinda movie.

    Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale acted really well but unfortunately,even though the film had a great and a fresh concept,had a pretty average execution.

    About Dark Blue,I can’t say much.Russel did a good job as Police Officer.Overall a pretty OK kinda film.

    Gosh,I do not know why from the “quality wise perfect” Hollywood,such poor films do come often!!

    Cheers,
    Arun

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    Mediocre movies are not restricted to India but on the whole Hollywood puts out plenty of worth-watching movies, a rarity from our movie-makers.

    • chennaiarun2007   July 11, 2010 at 9:03 am

      Watched “Johnny English” starring Rowan Atkinson two days ago.

      Please do watch it.

      SearchIndia.com Responds:

      We’ll watch it….Just read a few lines on the Wiki profile of this film.

      Looks interesting.

  4. 1012900   July 8, 2010 at 9:36 am

    I saw the trailer of Sorcerer’s Apprentice once in the theater. Apart from the special effects, it didn’t impress me much. But you can never judge a movie by its trailer. Gotta watch the film to see how good or bad it s.

    I’m gonna watch it just for Nicolas Cage. He was damn good in National Treasure 2.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    We’ll know for sure in a few days.

  5. unknownvirus   July 10, 2010 at 4:52 pm

    Ah! Nice movie..

    *Spoilers ahead* All through out my suspect was Marco who raped Alicia.. …But I guess it was indeed Benigno..

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    *Spoilers ahead*

    But Marco didn’t have much of a chance to do it (perhaps, you were misled by a remark Benigno makes about Marco staring at Alicia’s tits)…plus there was Benigno’s B&W ‘shrinking’ fantasy.

    Truly, a must-watch film.

    Glad you liked it.

    Did you watch Talk to Her recently on DVD or in the theater when it released a few years back?

    • unknownvirus   July 10, 2010 at 11:17 pm

      I watched it on DVD after I saw the SI reviews.

      Muchas Gracias for the recommendation.

      SearchIndia.com Responds:

      De nada. 😉

  6. adil4u   July 12, 2010 at 12:33 am

    Two movies I would really recommend you to watch……El Methodo (The Method) and La Habitación de Fermat (Fermat’s Room)…….I guarantee them. Very engaging.

    SearchIndia.com Responds:

    Will watch both.

    They look interesting going by a quick look at their Wiki profiles.

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