Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Cure for the Monday Night Blues

Yesterday, my reward for going to the gym was a trip to the movies on a school night. I saw La Mala Educación by Almodóvar which I liked, albeit with reservations. My main objection is that it left me a little bit cold emotionally. Its structure is quite ingenious, there is a story, within a movie, within the actual movie made by Almodovar, and within each the actors are playing each other. Also, as usual with Almodovar, there are all these formal references to other filmmakers that have gone before, in this case most prominently Hitchcock, although I am sure there are others that I don't recognize. On the down side, the romance that opens the door to the primary Hitchcockian evil-doing was somewhat unconvincing to me, and at the end I found myself much more pleased with the formal mechanisms that the film uses than the human emotions depicted therein. This is sort of the opposite of All About my Mother and Talk to Her, where I you get overwhelmed by the portrayal of grief, rage, love, lust, and friendship.

Still, its a gorgeous film, there is one particularly nice scene where two scheming characters have a conversation in front of these gorgeous and spooky painted figures. Plus, its been noted before, but Gael Garcia Bernal is really hot both in as a boy and as a drag queen.


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