Bad Education by Almodóvar

my rating:

Bad Education (La Mala Educación) is pretty much everything one might expect from a film by Pedro Almodóvar. There's attractive men, drug use, transsexuality, mistaken identity, some nudity, unlikely coincidences, Castellano dialog, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. But most importantly, there's an interesting human story.

The story can be a little hard to follow at first. Not because the film is in Spanish (thanks to my high school Spanish classes, I could sometimes understand what they were saying without the subtitles), but because the film includes a movie within the movie, and flashbacks to the main characters' boyhood. There's no less than three actors playing "Enrique" and actor Gael García Bernal goes by no less than four names, in character and not. I spent a fair amount of time early on trying to sort out who was who-else.

(I was also haunted a bit trying to figure out who else García had been, in which previous movie I'd seen. It finally clicked that he was one of the stars of Y Tu Mamá También, a Mexican - not Spanish - film. I guess his Castellano accent in this film threw me off. {smile} He was also Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries, which I haven't seen yet.)

I couldn't help noticing (so sue me) that Almodóvar adheres to the MPAA standard that at no time should a penis be clearly visible... but still manages to imply, suggest, and just-barely obscure them repeatedly. (You can see that part of García in Y Tu Mamá También.) I can't help wondering if there was a more explicit version for less prudish markets. In any case, there's plenty of eye candy for guy-watchers here.

Almodóvar's recent films have been more somber than his more playful (but dark) earlier films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This one was good, but I really recommend Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) or Hable con Ella (Talk to Her) if you only have time to see one of his recent films.