All or Nothing For Spain
This sucks. With all the news and stuff going on, and everybody yakking and posting and sounding like they know stuff, I can't think of anything to comment about. I don't know how other bloggers do it. You can't have stuff to say all the time and not just be blowing smoke, and yet, people pull it off. Amazing. Me, I got nothing. What I'm doing here is just something that somebody told me a long time ago to do as a writer. "If you ain't got nothin', write that you ain't got nothin'."
I watched the latest Almodovar film tonight, "Talk To Her." I'm pretty sure that I've seen all of his films now. This guy never ceases to keep me guessing, and 'Talk To Her' is no exception. Almodovar is the Father of modern Spanish filmmaking (post Franco), taking the mantle over from Luis Bunuel, the original Spanish master. Bunuel was most known for 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' (1972), 'Belle De Jour' (1967) with Catherine Deneuve, 'Un Chien Andalou' (1928) working with Dali ("Slicing up eyeballs" according to the venerable Frank Black, or was that Black Francis?), and suffered for his art by being exiled to Mexico where he did some of his most intriguing work.
Almodovar starts making his films a mere 5 years after the death of Franco and 3 years after Bunuel made his last film at the age of 77, 'That Obscure Object of Desire'. Spain is going wacky. After Franco and his Catholic styled rule, Spaniards are looking to re-identify themselves and are bursting with energy. Pedro dips into this soul searching and experimentation and reaches that pathos that is the New Spain. He also broke more than a few actors into the spotlight, most notably to Americans Antonio Banderas in 'Labyrinth of Passion" (1982), 'Matador' (1986), 'Law of Desire' (1987), 'Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown' (1989), and 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down' (1990), and Penelope Cruz in 'All About My Mother' (1999) 'Live Flesh' (1998), (though Penelope had been well known in Europe since the early 90s).
Tonight's fare involves a female Matador who winds up in a coma after being gored because she is distracted by thinking about betraying her lover; a dancer, also in a coma (simple auto accident) who is raped and impregnated while in that state, although later recovers after giving birth; a black and white silent movie sequence that involves a woman scientist that makes a potion that winds up shrinking her boyfriend to about two inches tall who eventually winds up climbing into her vagina while she sleeps; the magazine writer who was betrayed by the Matador through whom we live the story; and a Momma's boy who gets a job as a nurse to be near his obsession-the comatose girl whom he eventually impregnates. This is fun for the whole family if you understand Spanish or don't mind reading your movies. That's all the nothin' I got.
