Katlin Moore
La mala educación is a dark film concerning the long-term effects of pederasty in the priesthood. The sexual abuse of one young boy, Ignacio, affects the lives of all of the characters. The storyline is very disjointed and confusing which complements the confusing subject matter.The key elements in this film are desire, unrequited love, and the willingness to do anything to accomplish goals. Many of the characters in the film are not good people. One is a pederastic priest, another a desperate junkie, but the worst of all is Angél, a young actor who is willing to go to unbelievable lengths to get what he wants. He is guilty of many transgressions, including deception, manipulation, assuming his dead brother's identity, and murder. Gael García Bernal, the actor that plays Angél, is the glue that holds the film together. His portrayal is simultaneously bone chilling and heartbreaking.I believe that Enrique Goded, the young gay film maker is a reference to Pedro Almodóvar. He is the most human of the characters. He is not a monster. He is the victim of the beautiful and determined Angél.Neither the cinematography nor the soundtrack is remarkable. The costumes are appropriate to the late 1970's and do not lend nor distract from the film at large. As in most Almodóvar films, the most developed aspect is the acting. This film lacks one of Almodóvar's common themes of women banding together. While such a relationship would not make sense in the film, it seems empty without it.
poweller
Once again Pedro Almodovar has produced a masterpiece that is arguably his most personal film to date. As is typical of much of Almodovar texts, controversial themes are prominent; hard drug abuse, transvestism and sexual abuse are all dominant in 'Bad Education', meaning this may be a tough watch for many. However, for any Almodovar fan this is an essential watch.The film focuses on the relationship between two men; Ignacio (Gael García Bernal) and Enrique (Fele Martínez)and opens in the 1980's with the pair as young adults. Enrique is an aspiring film director and receives a visit from Ignacio for the first time in over fifteen years. This is a dark tale detailing the meeting of the pair during there time at a Catholic school during the 1960's and the sexual abuse they both suffered at the hands of one of the priests. Through a series of flashbacks and scenes from a story Ignacio has written about there childhood, the film explores various times in the pairs life. Due to the excellent twists in the film it is impossible to go into to much detail but the film rapidly evolves from a simple coming of age tale into a stylish modern thriller that plunges the viewer into constant confusion and contradictions.In terms of the cast Garcia Bernal is an actor at the top of his game, playing no less than five characters within the film. The multiple film references within the text and the depiction of the boys discovering both a love of each other and of cinema during the 60's are a strong indication of an autobiographical element to the film. It also has to be said there is some gorgeous cinematography during the film, in particular when the priests are playing football with the boys and a scene when Ignacio dives over Enrique in a pool.
Graham Greene
A meta-fictional construction; with one character writing a script that serves as a key to the past, which is then subsequently adapted by another character, creating a film that holds the secrets to the present. It is all blended together with the director's usual interest in characters that exist on the fringes of society - with artists, crooks, adulterers, lesbians, homosexuals and transvestites all interacting with a narrative of reminiscence that deals with the director's usual interests in illicit and obsessive love affairs, hopes and desires, secrets and lies - and all further embellished with the filmmaker's continuing reliance on films about film-making and the allure of the cinema itself. It is also a thriller, and a film that deals with the controversial blending of childhood, religion and sexuality; though all handled with a confidence and a subtly by Almodóvar that many of his more scathing critics may not necessarily expect.The drama focuses on the aftermath of such events, looking at how the ghosts of the past have shaped the course of these characters lives over the ensuing sixteen years, and more importantly, how the various unanswered questions that have plagued these protagonists will once again come under close scrutiny following a chance encounter that conspires to throw together elements of the past and the present, for what could be the very last time. Throughout the film, Almodóvar offers us many interesting twists and turns, while still managing to maintain our connection with the characters and the friendship that develops between the two protagonists to form the main bulk of the story. Once again, this relationship is a subtle one in comparison to many of Almodóvar's earlier films, such as Matador (1986) or Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), but nonetheless, it is still indicative of the director's style and flair; with the ironic visual compositions, bold, summery colour schemes, leaps within the narrative, characters within characters and the always delightful subversion of camp, melodramatic kitsch, into something altogether more moving.As ever with this particular combination of cold film-noir and feisty melodrama - used most notably in the director's earlier masterwork The Law of Desire (1987) - the background of the characters are used in a way that is entirely self-aware; fitting into the meta-textual tapestry that Almodóvar is able to weave so seamlessly, taking in elements of cinematic self-reference, memory and fiction, not to mention the contradicting elements of the real and the imagined. It works because the experiment is tied to a story that is interesting enough to support the bold leaps from comedy to drama, from warm nostalgia to cruel reality, and because the characters remain interesting and engaging throughout. Again, there is a certain self-aware quality to the portrayal of these main characters, as if they are somehow looking in on their own lives and documenting their fate as it appears (a familiar devise in all of Almodóvar's work), and yet, they remain sensitive, believable, intelligent and ultimately sympathetic.It is perhaps worth noting also that Bad Education (2004) is Almodóvar's first explicitly "gay film" since the aforementioned Law of Desire nearly twenty years earlier (though there were certainly elements of a homo-erotic subtext to the highly successful Talk to Her, 2002); with the return to these themes offering a nice change of pace from the female centric dramas and tales of obsessive male/female partnerships that acted as the central focus of his work throughout the 1990's. It is also notable for being a return or recreation of sorts to the late 70's/early 80's world of the Madrid art-scene that had flourished, post-Franco, and was home to none other than Almodóvar and his collaborators before the success of their first film, Pepi, Luci and Bom (1980). Like Almodovar, one of the characters here is a filmmaker that has found success in the underground, and combined with the recreation of the early gay-scene, with its attitudes and trends, we can begin to see this as a much more personal and important work within the Almodóvar filmography than we might have previously suspected.
