The Art of Film #5: Pedro Almodovar's 'Talk to Her'

Following the success of The Art of Film #3 on All About My Mother, we continue our exploration of Pedro Almodovar’s work with a study focusing on his 2002 film Talk to Her.

“Whoever speaks, loves”
Pedro Amodovar

“Nothing is simple”
Katarina, Dance Mistress, Talk to Her

At the end of Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother (1999), the final scene dissolves to reveal a bright red theatrical curtain upon which the director writes his dedication: “To all actresses who have played actresses; to all women who act”.  Three years later, at the beginning of his new film, Talk to Her (2002), another stage curtain rises: we are once again ushered into that marvellously artificial cinematic realm of heightened theatricality—a melodrama of dazzling colour, stunning visual imagery, lush and poignant music, and the most profound depths of human emotion—which we have come to know as distinctly “Almodovarean”.  Talk to Her went on to win an Academy Award for best original screenplay, as well as BAFTA awards for best original screenplay and best foreign language film.

Talk to Her is a story about the friendship between two men, about loneliness and the long convalescence of the wounds provoked by passion.  It is a film about the joy of narration and about words as a weapon against solitude, disease, death and madness.  It is also a film about madness, about a type of madness so close to tenderness and common sense that it does not diverge from normality.  And as always with Almodovar, it is a film about the power of the cinema to radically transform our lives. 

Here are just a few of the themes and questions we will address together in this ‘Art of Film’ study:

How does the use of metaperformances affect our sense of time in the film?  How do they encourage us to reflect more deeply on the social, moral and psychological conflicts at play in Talk to Her?

Almodovar surely anticipated the controversy surrounding the film’s sexual politics, but what exactly is he trying to express about gender relationships?

One of the major themes of the film is existential loneliness. What is the relationship between loneliness and grief in the film?

How does Talk to Her exploit and reinvent traditional fairy-tale narratives?  How does it employ fairy-tale strategies in critiquing a contemporary society beset by dehumanization and alienation?

JOINING DETAILS:

• The Art of Film #5: Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her (2002): Academy Award winner for Best Original Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Film
• Two 2.5 hour sessions on Zoom led by John Allemand
• Sundays, 7 & 14 December, 4.00 – 6.30 pm (UK)
• £125.00 for five hour study over two sessions, to include background notes and resources (N.B. participants in this study will be limited to twelve).
• We will show selected clips from the film during the study sessions, but participants are also asked to watch the film closely in advance (available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, and the Criterion Channel).

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REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.