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Bad Education

2004, Movie, NC-17, 109 mins

Bad Education: Review

BAD EDUCATION | LA MALA EDUCACION
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Pedro Almodovar's bold, Hitchcockian thriller in the VERTIGO (1958) vein — vivid colors and brittle cleverness wrapped around a dark, dark heart — makes provocative entertainment from material most filmmakers approach with solemn gravity. But rather than diminish the shattering consequences of abuse and betrayal, it situates them in a larger landscape of emotional fires in which personalities are forged, twisted and sometime destroyed. The nesting-box narrative unfolds in three time periods — 1980, 1977 and 1964 — and refracts the same events through several levels of reality. Madrid, 1980: Up-and-coming filmmaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) is at an impasse, reduced to parsing lurid newspaper articles in search of inspiration for his next film, when the past comes knocking. The uninvited guest is Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal), who attended a Catholic boarding school for boys with Enrique 16 years earlier and has matured into an exceptionally buff and beautiful young man who calls himself Angel — his stage name, he explains. Enrique would never have recognized him, but perhaps that's natural — they were only 10 when they last saw each other. Ignacio/Angel comes bearing "The Visit," a story inspired by their childhood, but he's really angling for a part in Enrique's next film. Enrique gives Ignacio/Angel the brush-off (there's nothing less attractive than an actor groveling for work, he sneers), but is so enthralled by "The Visit" that it seems to unfold before his eyes. 1977: Transvestite junkie Zahara (Bernal), who tours provincial towns with a half-baked drag cabaret, picks up drunken admirer Enrique Serrano (Alberto Ferreiro), who turns out to be her childhood sweetheart. As 10-year-old schoolmates in the mid-'60s, Zahara — then Ignacio (Nacho Perez) — and Enrique (played as a boy by Raul Garcia Froneiro) exchanged furtive affections at a movie theater, enchanted by the melodramatic excesses of actress Sara Montiel. They were separated by pedophile priest Father Manolo (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), who expelled Enrique so he could have Ignacio to himself. Fired up by angry memories, Zahara decides to blackmail Father Manolo. In the present, Enrique realizes he's found his next project, though he has his own ideas about the ending. Angel is determined to play Zahara, Enrique resists and the conflict rekindles their youthful attraction, though in a far more complicated, compromised and exploitative form. And just when the intersection of reality and fantasy seems as tangled as it can get, Father Manolo, who's left the clergy and reclaimed his old name, Berenguer (Lluis Homar), shows up to add some additional twists to the snarl of secrets and lies. By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing, Almodovar's tragic fable is steeped in a swooning sense of passion's power to inspire, pervert and destroy that draws the fractured narrative into a satisfying whole. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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