Best Film of the decade is from Spain
Time magazine, in the May 23rd, 2005 edition, selected Spanish film director, Pedro Almodovar’s film Hable con ella as the best film of the decade. The Time film critic had suggested that he believed Hable con ella was the best film of the year for 2002. Almodovar was nominated for Best Director for Hable con ella, but the award went to Roman Polanski for The Pianist. Almodovar and Hable con ella were also nominated and won for the Best Original Screenplay in the same year. This was Almodovar’s second Oscar after his win for Best Foreign Language Film in 1999 for Todo sobre mi madre.
The film is a bizarre love story. The two principal male characters are a male nurse who takes care of coma patients, and his love for one of his patients (whom he knew before she fell into a coma), and the lover of a female bull fighter, injured in her final appearance in the bull ring. Both men become fast friends after they meet in the hospital. Both women also play rolls, both before, and during their como in a bizarre Almodovarian twist of the plot (photos of the two women are featured on the movie poster above left).
Almodovar is known for his very quirky, and often very irreverent films, which are, in many ways, a reaction to the 4 decades of fascist dictatorship in Spain. With the end of the Franco era, Spain’s social pendulum began its swing to the left, and many Almodovar films are challenging with respect to their subject matter. Almodovar’s most recent film, La mala educaci??n (Bad Education) focusses on Franco-era religious education and sexual abuse by priests on the lives of two friends.
The Spanish Three class at FHUHS watches a couple of Almodovar films, notably, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown) during the Humor unit.