Movie Impressions - V
Finishing off the Telluride @ Dartmouth festival tonight was the highly-anticipated Almodóvar movie "La mala educación" ("Bad Education"). Since his last movie, "Hable con ella" ("Talk to her") was quite a success, and critically acclaimed to boot, comparisons are inevitable. Neither storyline nor mood put the present movie anywhere near the last one, but similarities in form are noticeable: both films are tragicomic, present their most significant events in narrative flashbacks, and depict present-day interactions between characters united through cataclysmic events in their past.
Storywise, "Bad Education" is structured like film noir and ends up parodying the genre. Since any discussion about the plot of a film noir is a spoiler, I'll refrain from providing any; the mini-description at the Telluride website is a good enough teaser. I'll just add that the movie depicts lots of sex and no naked women.
Was it good? Certainly, but it wasn't great, and didn't come close to being the capstone that "Talk to her" was. That movie worked so well because we, the viewers, cared deeply enough about the fates of its characters to be drawn into the bizarre details of their pasts. I get the feeling that this time around Almodóvar got so engrossed in providing us those bizarre twists from the past that he forgot to first develop his characters so that we actually cared. Thus, for the last third of the movie, I knew that the final pieces of the puzzle were going to be revealed but I didn't really care how things turned out. Sad.
I would give this a 6.5/10. By way of comparison, "Talk to her" gets a 9/10.
Storywise, "Bad Education" is structured like film noir and ends up parodying the genre. Since any discussion about the plot of a film noir is a spoiler, I'll refrain from providing any; the mini-description at the Telluride website is a good enough teaser. I'll just add that the movie depicts lots of sex and no naked women.
Was it good? Certainly, but it wasn't great, and didn't come close to being the capstone that "Talk to her" was. That movie worked so well because we, the viewers, cared deeply enough about the fates of its characters to be drawn into the bizarre details of their pasts. I get the feeling that this time around Almodóvar got so engrossed in providing us those bizarre twists from the past that he forgot to first develop his characters so that we actually cared. Thus, for the last third of the movie, I knew that the final pieces of the puzzle were going to be revealed but I didn't really care how things turned out. Sad.
I would give this a 6.5/10. By way of comparison, "Talk to her" gets a 9/10.
posted by AC at 1:44 AM
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