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  Amy
  
Jankowicz
Talk to Her
Spain, 2002
[Pedro Almod�var]
Javier C�mara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores
Drama
  
Despite having a terrible block about pronouncing his name, I had heard great things of Almod?var and of this film. Although not at all what I expected, the film offered gentle humour, a simple but involving story, and excellent acting.

Benigno (C�mara) is a nurse employed solely to look after the comatose Alicia, a job he cares about with every fibre of his body. With infinite care he manicures her nails, cuts her hair, washes every inch of her milky skin, notes her monthly period, and cleans it up. It is in every sense a labour of love, and when we learn that he adored Alicia even before her coma, the intensity of his obsession wanders quickly into the obscenely possessive.

Meanwhile, Marco�s bullfighter girlfriend Lydia falls into a coma after a goring in the bullring. Marco�s visits to the hospital acquaint him with Benigno and his ways, and the two oddly lonely men begin a friendship of sorts. Marco is no stranger to loss or obsessive love, and the fiery Lydia had begun slowly to heal a previously broken heart.

The story is told through gorgeous photography, gentle humour and a complete lack of moral judgement. This last is hardest to swallow, but it allows the viewers to draw their own conclusions. Benigno is, indeed, the benign face of stalking, obsession and violation; behaviour that we often call romance. Another ambiguous concern is the photography of Alicia�s beautiful body, which allows for as much fetishising and visual pleasure as Benigno experiences himself, implicating the audience within the same behaviour and thus exposing the regular fetishistic consumption of women�s bodies in cinema as a whole. It is not, however, insensitively done, and a huge amount of creativity goes into portraying certain events with humour and force but with a skilled avoidance of objectification.

The entire film leaves many questions unanswered and its non-judgemental attitude contrasts with the reverence of its photography and the gorgeousness of its soundtrack.
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