Movie - Hable con ella

Talk to Her
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Talk to Her

English Poster for Hable con ella
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Produced by Agustín Almodóvar
Michel Ruben
Written by Pedro Almodóvar
Starring Javier Cámara
Darío Grandinetti
Leonor Watling
Geraldine Chaplin
Rosario Flores
Music by Alberto Iglesias
Cinematography Javier Aguirresarobe
Editing by José Salcedo
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
(USA)
Warner Sogefilms
(Spain)
20th Century Fox
(Argentina)
Pathé
(France)
Release date(s) 15 March 2002
25 December 2002 (limited)
25 December 2002
Running time 112 min.
Country Spain
Language Spanish
Budget n/a
Gross revenue $51,001,550 (worldwide)

Talk to Her (Spanish: Hable con ella) is a 2002 film written and directed by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, starring Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin and Rosario Flores. It won the 2002 Academy Award for Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and the 2003 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film's themes include the difficulty of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, secrets and infidelity, and the persistence of love beyond loss.

In 2005, Time magazine film critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included Talk to Her in their list of the All-TIME 100 Greatest Movies.


Plot
Benigno (literally meaning "benign" or "harmless" in Spanish) and Marco cross paths when they both attend the same concert dance, only to eventually meet again at a private clinic where Benigno works. There, he is the personal nurse and caregiver for a patient named Alicia, a beautiful dance student who lies in a coma, and with whom Benigno has become obsessed. Marco, a journalist and travel writer, is at the clinic to visit his girlfriend Lydia, a famous matador who is also comatose after being gored by a bull. As the men stand vigil over these women, the story unfolds in flashback and flash forward motifs, telling the lives of the four characters with respect to their relationships. Marco leaves Lydia when her previous lover informs him that they had reunited a month before Lydia's accident.

Marco leaves Spain for Jordan to write a tourist guide, where he reads in a newspaper that Lydia has died in her coma.

Meanwhile, Benigno is accused of raping Alicia, who is discovered to be pregnant, believing their contact to be love. Benigno is sent to prison in Segovia, and a short time later he ingests a large quantity of pills to try to put himself into a coma, thus reuniting himself with Alicia; but he dies of an overdose. Ironically, Alicia wakes up during or sometime after childbirth. The baby is stillborn, and Alicia begins rehabilitation to recover her walking ability. The film ends with Marco, sitting two rows in front of Alicia, turning around and smiling at her for a moment, and then turning back around.

The play "Trenches", by Alicia's dance teacher, mirrors the events that unfold in the movie. In the play, whenever a soldier dies, a ballerina rises from the body. In the movie, when Benigno dies, Alicia (a ballerina herself) is reborn and rises.