Bad Education

On Friday, I got a brochure from the Detroit Film Theater, detailing their Spring schedule. Normally it would lie around for a week or two before I would get around to checking it out, but I noticed the brochure had a cover by one of my favorite artists, Tim Biskup, so I immediately opened it, because I actually do judge a book by it's cover. Or brochure. Whatever. Anyway, the point is that it turns out that Bad Education was playing there over the weekend, and I decided I would go come hell or high water. I had actually resigned myself to having to watch it on DVD, since it already has a release date posted on Netflix. Up to that point I had never seen an Almodovar movie in a theater, since all the arty theaters are on the other side of the metro area, and because, in spite of my aspirations growing up, at this point I do not have any friends with whom I feel comfortable going to foreign films with, even foreign films as entertaining as these. So, without any prospect of companionship, I went by myself to see the movie.

The movie was beautiful. The subject had made me a bit skittish (pedophilic priests -- to be honest, I think that had more to do with my reticence to invite anyone to join me than did the fact that it was Spanish); in the end, it was a much different film than I had imagined. Much more textured and complicated, which makes me wish that I could go back and watch it again. The acting was superb, as I sort of expected; Gael Garcia Bernal in particular did an enormously effective job, not allowing the motivations of his character to become too clear to the audience, much less to the other characters. The musical score was gorgeous, doing a credible homage to Bernard Herrmann without ever simply aping his style.

One thing that made me nervous about this film, as well as Talk to Her, was how minimal the moralizing was, as compared with the preachy and pedantic tone of Hollywood films. Every character is seen as flawed, the only difference being the degree of the flaw. Actually, this has been a theme in Almodovar's films for a long while now; I just flashed back to the junkie Mother Superior in Dark Habits. No one is free from guilt, and yet no one is completely monstrous. It's unsettling, after being trained to watch movies in a certain way, to have that undermined, and played against us. This film is ultimately about the stories we tell, as well as the stories we don't.

It suddenly occurs to me that my critical vocabularly is quite lacking. I know how the film made me feel, and I know that I liked it, but I don't really have any was of describing it. I think I'm much better at describing why I didn't like something than why I did.

I'm going to see my relatives in Rochester, NY tomorrow morning, and won't be back until Tuesday. We'll see if I'm any chattier then. Have a good weekend!