SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

lastliberal Unfortunately, Cruz is not long in this film. She is a prostitute who give birth on a bus. The story is really about her son, whom we join 20 years later.Now, hang on. Victor (Liberto Rabal), her son, is infatuated with Elena (Italian beauty Francesca Neri), but she is just a junkie who is more interested in seeing her dealer than him. They scuffle and the police (David and Sancho) come. Sancho's wife is fooling around, so he is drunk and gets into a fight with Victor and a gun goes off injuring David. David (Javier Bardem) heads off to a life of wheelchair basketball and marriage to Elena. Victor goes to jail. When he gets out, he takes up with Clara (Ángela Molina), Sancho's wife.If you are not confused yet, it gets more interesting as secrets are exposed. Pedro Almodóvar has written and directed another interesting film. It ends just as it begins, but in a dig at the repressive Franco regime, with a nod to freedom.It is a comedy, a detective story, a thriller, a drama - a bit of everything. - An Almodóvar paella for the eyes.

tedg Almodovar at least does two things for me.—He touches on deep stuff without pretending that he has to do so in a story. Thus he avoids moralizing and is able to maintain all sorts of ambiguities and overlaps between different parts of the world. Oh, there's always a story, but they are so soap opera-ish and delivered so jauntily that they actually separate from the movie.—He does everything cinematically. He really has an eye that is a treasure. Every element of what we see, WE SEE. It isn't explained. It isn't in dialog that we happen to overhear, we see it. Not only does he use a cinematic vocabulary to deliver the main goods, but similar devices are used to show us that it is a layered structure.He mixes television (in several modes), old movies, and out of body narrative. Often dreams and visions. Paintings, photographs and postcards and in this case an imagined ending (after "Taxi Drviver). Often one or more characters is a generator of public stories; here it is a wounded cop who becomes a wheelchair basketball star.He's not my favorite Spaniard, and this isn't my most valued of his films. But its hard to better than any visit from Pedro.Its an honestly vaginal world (with the connection among several layers being there) and I suppose therefore most women will actually think the story matters.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) Victor, the son of a prostitute, tries to hook up with Elena, a druggie with whom he'd had a previous tryst (his first). She resists, the cops are called, and there's a standoff between Victor and policemen David and Sancho. There's a struggle, and a gun is fired, leaving David paralyzed and sending Victor to jail.When Victor gets out of jail, his mind is on bitter revenge, especially after he discovers that Elena, now clean and sober, has married the invalid David, who's now a paralympic basketball star. Victor gets a job working at the orphanage funded and operated by Elena (but he's not stalking her, no) and begins to romance Clara, the battered wife of Sancho.Each of the five characters, unavoidably intertwined, is complex and morally ambiguous. What are Victor's true intentions? What, even more importantly, are his capabilities? Is Sancho properly haunted by his treatment of Clara and of that fateful night that brought him, David, and Victor together? If Clara does leave Sancho, where will she turn - or is she simply another turn-the-cheek spouse? Does David have a sense of moral superiority because he no longer has use of his lower limbs and therefore has suffered more than most people? And which is stronger, Elena's lust or her loyalty? The quintet, whose lives were forever changed that one night, find themselves drawn back together in a web of intrigue of their own design. All of the actors are fantastic, particularly Francesca Neri, as Elena, and Liberto Rabal, as Victor. The on screen chemistry among all five leads is palpable; no one feels they were just dropped into the movie indiscriminately. Pedro Almodovar's complicated tale is never preachy, and none of the characters are stereotypical. Not all cops are noble, not all drug addicts are irredeemable, not all orphanage operators are perfect, and not all criminals are despicable. Pretty obvious stuff in the real world, but in the land of movies characters are typically painted with as broad a brush as possible in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The movie is tense without veering toward melodrama, and although it begins rather slowly, the final twenty minutes or so are unsettling, nerve-wracking suspense. I defy you to sit complacently while Elena approaches Victor's barrio apartment.

Hermina Gwen Almodovar is a master story writer--he knows exactly what to tell the viewer and when to tell it. He understands the volatile nature of the film medium, preferring to illustrate the motives of his characters rather than simply state them. As in "Todo Sobre mi Madre" and "Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios," Almodovar uses subtler methods than others to draw attention to important details. The movie holds together like an artfully composed opus, returning to hints given earlier on and embellishing on them. In this way Almodovar will definitely mess with your mind; by the end of the movie your judgments on the characters will make a total about-face.However, the first time viewer should be warned not to take the circumstances too seriously. Almodovar's plots thrive on unlikely circumstances and chance meetings of characters. It is something more akin to the magical realism in literature, not to be taken literally.