Film Pick of the Week
Talk to Her
Two men meet casually at the theater; later, a friendship develops between them at a private clinic where one of them (Javier Cámara) is a nurse caring for a comatose ballerina and the other (Darío Grandinetti) is visiting his girlfriend, who is also in a coma. The latest film from Pedro Almodóvar (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother) is a multi-layered discourse on communication and nurturing, as both men tend to women who are unaware of their presence. Talking to the women becomes therapy as much for the men as for the patients. At length, the men tend as much to each other’s needs as they do to the women’s. Almodóvar moves his story in unexpected directions that manage at once to be creepy and surprisingly poignant. It’s a melancholy film, but with wry, comic touches. J.L.
