Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

Starring:Javier Camara, Leonor Watting
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Pedro Almodovar broke into the art-house mainstream with this wild, manic comedy about a gaggle of women and their various problems with men, be they married lovers, cheating husbands, fiancés, or terrorists. Almodovar's long-time leading lady, Carmen Maura, stars as an actress (famed for her laundry detergent commercial as the mother of a sloppy serial killer) who's just been dumped by her married lover. In the midst of trying to track him down for a face-to-face confrontation, she crosses paths with her lover's son (Antonio Banderas), his unbalanced wife (Julieta Serrano), and his new girlfriend (Kiti Manver). Adding more fuel to the fire is the hapless friend (Maria Barranco) who got involved with a Shiite terrorist and is now being hunted by the police. Almodovar, a master of farcical screwball comedy, manages to keep all these balls in the air in dizzy, hilarious style without once losing his momentum. Chock full of the director's over-the-top stylization, in terms of both story and sets, the film is a hilarious yet heartfelt marriage of kitsch and drama, verging on parody but never going entirely over the top. Maura is absolutely breathtaking as the unhinged lover, dispensing wise advice to others while trying to keep a semblance of sanity, and the supporting cast is quintessential Almodovar, including a brief but memorable turn by Banderas in what could have been a bland, go-nowhere role. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1989. --Mark Englehart

All About My Mother After her son is killed in an accident, Manuela (Cecilia Roth) leaves Madrid for her old haunts in Barcelona. She reconnects with an old friend, a pre-op transsexual prostitute named La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), who introduces her to Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young nun who turns out to be pregnant. Meanwhile, Manuela becomes a personal assistant for Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), an actress currently playing Blanche DuBois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. All About My Mother traces the delicate web of friendship and loss that binds these women together. The movie is dedicated to the actresses of the world, so it's not surprising that all the performances are superb. Roth in particular anchors All About My Mother with compassion and generosity. But fans of writer-director Pedro Almodóvar needn't fret--as always, Almodóvar's work undermines conventional notions of sexual identity and embraces all human possibilities with bright colors and melodramatic plotting. However, All About My Mother approaches its twists and turns with a broader emotional scope than most of Almodóvar's work; even the more extravagant aspects of the story are presented quietly, to allow the sadness of life to be as present as the irrepressible vitality of the characters. Almodóvar embraces pettiness, jealousy, and grief as much as kindness, courage, and outrageousness, and the movie is the richer for it. ----Bret Fetzer

Talk to Her
Writer-director Pedro Almodóvar makes another masterpiece with Talk to Her, his first film since the wonderful All About My Mother. Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is in love with Lydia (Rosario Flores), a female bullfighter who is gored by a bull and sent into a coma. In the hospital, Marco crosses paths with Benigno (Javier Camara), a male nurse who looks after another coma patient, a young dancer named Alicia (Leonor Watling). From Benigno's gentle attentiveness to Alicia, Marco learns to take care of Lydia... but from there, the story goes in directions that deftly manage to be sad, hopeful, funny, and creepy, sometimes at the same time. The rich human empathy of Almodóvar's recent films is passionate, heartbreaking, intoxicating--there aren't enough adjectives to praise this remarkable filmmaker, who is at the height of his powers. Talk to Her is superb, with outstanding performances from all involved. --Bret Fetzer

The Flower of My Secret
Pedro Alomodóvar made this misfired, rambling comedy about a romance novelist (Marisa Paredes) whose crumbling marriage has left her depressed and unable to work. At a low point, she writes a scathing indictment of her own books (which are penned under another name), with no one realizing critic and author are one and the same. Almodóvar ( Law of Desire) has the start of a great idea here, and for once, he's direct about his sympathy for a character. But nothing else about The Flower of My Secret is so clear. Despite its unusual allegiance to the straightforward "women's films" of the 1950s, this movie blows it by becoming needlessly complicated over extraneous junk, forcing one to grope in the dark for Almodóvar's point. -- Tom Keogh

Bad Education
Writer/director Pedro Almodóvar's dark, sexy Hitchcock homage is his best work since his Oscar-winning All About My Mother, and deepened by a sun-dappled sadness. Handsome, enigmatic Ángel (Gael García Bernal) arrives at the Spanish movie offices of director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) and happily proclaims that he's actually Enrique's long-lost school chum Ignacio--an announcement that is both less than convincing and more than it seems. A novice actor, Ángel pitches a semi-autobiographical screenplay in which he's determined to star, a revenge-laden reflection of the doomed love he and Enrique shared as boys before a pedophile priest cruelly intervened. The script, and the lost days it recalls, carefully unfurls into a series of brooding movies-within-movies and memories-inside-memories, which allow the sensual, multiple-role-playing Bernal to give the performance of his young career--among other things, he makes a stunningly convincing drag queen--and Almodóvar the opportunity to movingly suggest that people will pay any price to ensure that their stories are told. -- Steve Wiecking

More Stills from Pedro Almodovar Classics Collection(click for larger image)

More Pedro Almodovar at Amazon.com

Songs of Almodóvar CD
Volver
The Films of Pedro Almodóvar

Customer Reviews:

Pedro! Viva!.......2007-05-14

I was familiar with the movies. They were part of a Retrospective about 6 yrs. ago at the Museum of the Moving Image. The box set is great!! The layout is fabulous. I had all the other movies except Matador. This is a must have for any Pedro fan. It is only missing High Heels, one of Pedro's best.

Great collection to have.......2007-05-13

I am a big fan of director Pedro Almodovar's films and this collection of 8 of his best movies is a must-have. These timeless movies are presented in a nice, space-saving box. I recommend it wholeheartedly to any fan of Almodovar.

VIVA PEDRO.......2007-05-12

Brilliant fimmaking, enormous vairety, lovely transfers. The material is difficult ot see. If you didn't catch these things when they were first released, you are up the creek. The theatrical reissue that was meant to promote the video release didn't last long enough for me to see but one of them. The dvds of most are out print, but I had LIVE FLESH, TALK TO HER and BAD EDUCATION on dvd and WOMEN ON THE VERGE on laser disc. But still, I had to have the set. Really terrific. got a good price at amazon Marketplace and i'm totlaly satisfied.

You have to appreciate the improbable and ridiculous.......2007-05-01

A pretty good collection, if strangely inclusive of BAD EDUCATION, a recent film, with the older batch of films, mainly of 1980s. This could be because LAW OF DESIRE's film director character is a forerunner of the film director in the later film. The problem is in reviewing the collection or the individual films. For instance, there are 3 documentaries on the filmmaker included on an extra disk. Otherwise the movies are presented w/English subtitle options but no extras, except for one of them.

Almodovar's style as a whole is for wildly improbable plots involving situations and characters that run of the mill people would never experience. American film reviewers love this, as they love French farce, and so give these films a free pass, awarding a blue ribbon. The true question is whether the same films would be as highly reviewed if the identical screenplay were presented as a solely American product.

Almodovar's film staples include (on the 8 films represented in this package): (1) Penelope Cruz going into labor (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER; LIVE FLESH). (2) The homely guy is always slick, a real winner, at least professionally, and sometimes a film director (BAD EDUCATION; LAW OF DESIRE). (3) There's always strained theatrical moments, such as presentations of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, that take up much screen time, and often are comical without being meant to be. Ditto a usage of older films that his characters seem to be greatly influenced by. (4) The cute guy, who in real life would probably be greatly sought after as a romantic partner, is always a loser who becomes obsessed with another person or thing to the detriment of everything else (LIVE FLESH; LAW OF DESIRE; BAD EDUCATION). (5) Usage of FF nudity is primarily male. (6) Everyone in the world (or at least Spain) is personally acquainted with a transexual or transvestite.

Briefly, on the films themselves, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is a tear-jerker that goes to extremes and unfortunately goes on way too long. Good acting, but improbable characters and their life histories make this film an experience to endure.

BAD EDUCATION has the superlative Gael Garcia Bernal in it, and is also a blatant indictment of the Catholic Church's methods. The twists and turns in the plot make it worthwhile as well as uniformly good performances. Unusual film from this director, who usually focusses more on the women. For those squeamish of homosexual content, this film is not nearly as explicit as LAW OF DESIRE.

LAW OF DESIRE has the young Antonio Banderas seducing/seduced by a film director whom he is obsessed with. There is FF nudity from Banderas and others. Rather interesting, not quite a thriller, but an ending that brings the story-line full circle in a way. Rather a moral on how what you're looking for may be staring you in the face but you have to be prepared to take it. I found the plot weak whenever it got into the ancillary characters, as they were unnecessary to the main plot but presumably there to soften the main character of the film director.

LIVE FLESH is an unbelievable situation of a young man from prison subsequently having affairs with two police officers' (one of whom he'd shot and crippled) wives. Unfortunately this plot was wholly predictable though improbable. Too many cliches of drunken criminal cop abusing wife, etc. At times seems it was meant to be a music video, and should have been, with pop songs used as narrative.

TALK TO HER, generally considered one of the more popular Almodovar films, and a quiet, sincere character piece. I could easily have lived without the scene of the shrunken man interacting with a woman's nude body; that was outrageous for the fun of it, I guess. But from what appeared to be a would-be homosexual union between two men veered in another direction that also made the ending quite believable. It set up cliches only to knock them down.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN has provided me an obsession with gazpacho that has haunted me to this day. I didn't watch it again via this collection, but realized I have no memories of the film from first seeing it, except that it was fun; so that tells me nothing of the plot is essential, and I probably didn't identify with the characters.

THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET is weird, as it takes off from the scenario of ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, which isn't a good thing. It's about a writer's crisis, this time her own self-conceit being played out on a public stage, as she is both a well known author but also writes under a pseudonyn attacking her own work. Meanwhile, her marriage is falling apart. So she's really a woman having an identity crisis, as an artist, and as a woman. Maybe it takes a person who's undergone an identity crisis to understand this one.

MATADOR can be summed as "Can two serial killers find happiness in death with each other?" Add Banderas as a sexually confused young man who appears to have occasional perfect-radar psychic abilities and a young woman who's been sexually assaulted three times and is quite casual about it, and a closeted gay detective, and a psychiatrist who wants to seduce basically anybody, and you pretty much have a would-be psychology thriller very confused about what's going on. The film has the confusion one would expect from a wholly improvisational piece, like the director was making it up as they went along in the filming. I am blinded by the idea any of these characters would even exist in real life, except for the detective, so find it amazing they'd actually be stumbling into each other's orbit. A fun movie to spend some time on, as it is an entertaining mix of psychological motivations and I guess you can breathe easy nobody like this lives on your block.

It's about time Pedro's older (and best ) movies were available in USA format!.......2007-04-24

I have been an Amoldovar fan for more than twenty years (at least). I'm glad that he's gotten more American recognition now, but his older movies are still my favorites ( and so hard to find not that I'm no longer in a big city with great art and foreign film theaters. I'm so glad this incredible collection is finally available! (Not to mention that Matador and Law of Desire are some of the best acting Banderas has ever done!)

Average customer rating:

intense and disturbing......
Almodovar the God!
'Talk to Her' with truly speak to you...
The beautiful worlds we create within ourselves
Paloma

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)
Starring: Geraldine Chaplin , Chus Lampreave , Loles Leon , Marisa Paredes , and Darío Grandinetti
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Amazon.com

Writer-director Pedro Almodóvar makes another masterpiece with Talk to Her, his first film since the wonderful All About My Mother. Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is in love with Lydia (Rosario Flores), a female bullfighter who is gored by a bull and sent into a coma. In the hospital, Marco crosses paths with Benigno (Javier Camara), a male nurse who looks after another coma patient, a young dancer named Alicia (Leonor Watling). From Benigno's gentle attentiveness to Alicia, Marco learns to take care of Lydia... but from there, the story goes in directions that deftly manage to be sad, hopeful, funny, and creepy, sometimes at the same time. The rich human empathy of Almodóvar's recent films is passionate, heartbreaking, intoxicating--there aren't enough adjectives to praise this remarkable filmmaker, who is at the height of his powers. Talk to Her is superb, with outstanding performances from all involved. --Bret Fetzer

Description

The lives of four characters flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny. Golden Globe WINNER: Best Foreign Language Film. Academy Award Nominee: Achievement in Directing. Academy Award WINNER: Original Screenplay. Directed by Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Flower of My Secret, High Heels).

Customer Reviews:

intense and disturbing.............2007-03-24

HABLE CON ELLA (English translation: TALK TO HER) is a look at the lives of two men caring for coma patients, and how their lives intersect and are interconnected by their shared experience. Benigno Martin (Javier Camara) is a nurse who cares for Alicia (Leonor Watley), a beautiful ballerina, who went into a coma after being struck by a car. Marco Zuluaga (Dario Grandinetti) is a writer looking in on his girlfriend, Lydia Gonzalez (Rosario Flores), a bullfighter who was gored and knocked unconscious. Through a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, the pieces of their lives are put together like an intricate puzzle, with an unlikely twist at the end.

This film sent chills up my spine, in some of the sequences (for reasons I won't elaborate on, to ruin the film). This is only the second film I have seen by the Spanish filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar. I find his style as a director and writer to be at once provocative, grotesque and neurotic. The dynamic between the men and women in this story are in a word turbulent. Also, there is a surreal quality to the style of this film that is at once dreamlike and nightmarish. I came away feeling more than a little sick to my stomach......

Almodovar the God!.......2007-02-03

No transvestites? No Transvestites? That's just sublime especially for an Almodovar film. Still there will always be this innovative edge that "eeks" strange. Psychic male nurses, crying lovers, and two comatized patients make one brilliant film by one eccentric director. It's doesn't have that Soap opera-esque appeal that Pedro is known for but it does contain a certain distinguished factor that is absolutely mesmerizing, the cinematography. The depth of the film is surreal, the bull-fighting is grotesque, and the adventurous ideals of the director are normal but still bold. Talk to Her (Hable con Ella) is a film about love, faith, deception, and innocence, each moment you discover these moments is another tear that comes dripping from your eye.

'Talk to Her' with truly speak to you..........2006-12-09

Pedro Almodovar has again given us a beautifully haunting film, a film that causes us to truly think about our lives and the way we live it. In `Talk to Her' we have the story of two men brought together by the women they love, both of whom have fallen into a deep coma. The first man is Benigno Martin (Javier Camara), a male nurse who has fallen in love with young aspiring dancer Alicia (Leonor Watling). Alicia has been lying in a coma for four years after a tragic car accident and he has been caring for her day and night ever since. The second man is Marco Zuluaga (the remarkable Dario Grandinetti), a journalist who is brought to the hospital after his girlfriend, bullfighter Lydia Gonzalez (Rosario Flores), is gored by a bull and thrown into a coma as well.

The real story here revolves around these men bonding in the face of their trials. Marco struggles with loving Lydia, struggles with guilt over her predicament and his battles with whether or not she ever really loved him. Benigno on the other hand ahs never had Alicia's love for she never truly knew him, but after spending four years at her side he feels as though they are in love and truly meant to be together. He talks to her constantly, divulging his secrets to her, his passions, and he begins to live her life for her, watching the movies she once loved and seeing as much live dance as he can in order to have more to tell her.

The script is original and captivating and is only heightened by the superb acting and directing of this film. Benigno's unconventional love of Alicia is a subject that is sure to cause a lot of controversy and talk, but also is Marco's devotion to Benigno in his time of dire straights. Their relationship is an ambiguous one, one that raises my suspicion, especially in the final frames when Marco sees Alicia. I'm brought to wonder if he wants to be with her for himself or in an attempt to have yet another part of Benigno. You watch and you decide. A truly wonderful and unique film.

The beautiful worlds we create within ourselves.......2006-12-09

Talk To Her is a movie about loneliness, the fragile connections between human beings, and the worlds we create within ourselves. Benigno is a lonely man, who had lived in isolation taking care of his mother for most of his life. Through his window he watches Alicia, practicing in a dance studio across the street, and falls deeply in love with her. This window is his only contact with the outside world, and Alicia becomes his entire world. Then Alicia is in a car accident and falls into a coma. Benigno works at a hospital as a nurse since his mother died. He serendipitously is hired to take care of her fulltime, which he does with care and love and joy. He dotes on her, and tells her everything as if she were an imaginary friend. Although she is completely unaware of it, he is now her window to the outside world.

Then Benigno meets Marco. Marco is a journalist who has fallen in love with the bullfighter Lydia, who has just been admitted to the coma ward after being gruesomely gored by a bull. Marco visits Lydia daily, while Benigno cares for Alicia down the hall. Benigno reaches out to Marco, which first frightens Marco because of Benigno's awkward lack of inhibition, but then they soon realize they share an intense yet one-sided love. They are both lonely men, who hide away from the world, and while they are limited in their abilities to connect sincerely with healthy human beings, they find themselves easily poring out all the love and locked up emotion inside them into their coma patients. This one-sided love for their coma patients slowly morphs into their own real friendship. Benigno supports Marco when Lydia dies, and Marco becomes the only one who will try to help Benigno when what Benigno believes was an act of love lands him in jail. Alicia finally wakes up, from what can only be described as giving birth to herself.

Paloma.......2006-10-18

In the Extras on the DVD, Almodovar narrates the entire film along with Geraldine Chaplin explaining his motivation in doing certain things in the film. One thing he says is that many people are speechless after viewing the film. Me too but I'd say the really bad thing about this film is its concept that women are no more than beautiful mindless objects: sort of like babes in "The Wedding Crashers." But beautiful the women are. The actress who plays the bullfighter gives an incredible performance before she goes into a coma. (Are there really female bullfighters?) And best of all is the song Paloma. The wedding scene was idiotic and should not have been included because it was unlikely to have happened the way it was filmed. The photography was very beautiful. (Do they really have jails like that in Spain? Maybe Martha Stewart served her time in one like it.)

Hable con Ella (Talk to her) [PAL/REGION 2 DVD. Import-Spain]

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Hable con Ella (Talk to her) [PAL/REGION 2 DVD. Import-Spain]
Director: Pedro Almodovar
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000LEYK9W

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talk to her

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Y Tu Mama Tambien
Live Flesh
All About My Mother
Open Your Eyes
Sex and Lucia (Unrated Edition)

ASIN: B00091QZA4

Pedro Almodovar 5-DVD Collection (Bad Education; Talk To Her; All About My Mother; Live Flesh; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ]

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Pedro Almodovar 5-DVD Collection (Bad Education; Talk To Her; All About My Mother; Live Flesh; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ]
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Manufacturer: Fox
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000FVXU06

Product Description

"Great Britain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. LANGUAGES: Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Subtitles), WIDESCREEN (2.35:1), SYNOPSIS: This 5-DVD Collection contains 5 Almodovar's movies: Bad Education (La Mala educación): In the early 60s, two boys - Ignacio and Enrique - discover love, movies and fear in a Christian school. Father Manolo, the school principal and Literature teacher, both witnesses and takes part in these discoveries. The three characters come against one another twice again, in the late 70s and in 1980... Talk To Her (Hable con ella): Marco, a journalist grieving for a love affair that ended ten years' ago, falls in love with Lydia, a bullfighter also on the rebound. Benigno, a nurse, dedicates his life to his only patient, a young dancer in a coma as a result of an accident four years' before; he talks to her, reads to her, holds photographs in front of her closed eyes. Does a miracle await? All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre): A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. She goes to Barcelona to find the lad's father, a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child... Live Flesh (Carne trémula): Pizza delivery man Victor is having an argument with Elena, whom he met a few days ago, but she was high then and doesn't want to hear about him. Reacting to the noise, two cops, young David and older Sancho, arrive at the scene, the gun accidentally goes off... Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (¡Átame!): Ricky is released from a mental hospital, and knows exactly what he wants to do. He hunts down Marina, a porn film star he once had sex with, and tries to convince here to be his wife. She is a bit reluctant, so he ties her up... Will this approach endear him to her ? SPECIAL FEATURES: Box Set, Interactive Menu, Multi-DVD Set, "

Hable Con Ella (Talk to her) [NTSC/REGION 4 DVD. Import-Latin America]

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Hable Con Ella (Talk to her) [NTSC/REGION 4 DVD. Import-Latin America]
Starring: Javier Camara
Director: Pedro Almodovar
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000KQIW7W

Pedro Almodovar 4-pack (Bad Education / Flower of my Secret / All About My Mother / Talk to Her) - Amazon.com Exclusive

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Pedro Almodovar 4-pack (Bad Education / Flower of my Secret / All About My Mother / Talk to Her) - Amazon.com Exclusive
Starring: Pedro Almodóvar
Manufacturer: Columbia Tri-Star
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Pedro Almodovar Collection: Bad Education / Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down / Live Flesh / All About My Mother / Talk To Her [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

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Pedro Almodovar Collection: Bad Education / Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down / Live Flesh / All About My Mother / Talk To Her [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]
Director: Pedro Almadovar
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Product Features:

Region 2 encoding (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt).
Requires multi-region DVD player in the US.

ASIN: B000FK9HTK

Product Description

Feature box set with the titles: 'Bad Education', 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down', 'Live Flesh', 'All About My Mother' and 'Talk To Her'.

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