![]() ![]() However, in addition to the entertainment, there is one particularly bright spot, one Gael Garcia Bernal (playing Angel and all the rest of them) who first served notice in the brilliant Mexican film Amores perros (2000) that he has to be reckoned with. In the end, Bad Education, while enormously entertaining, stops at being just that instead of moving further into the realm of depth of emotion and breadth of creativity we see in Talk to Her and All About Mother. And all these stories within stories are told jumping back and forth between past and present, fiction and reality. Meanwhile, Father Monolo jumps out of the screenplay, materialising as a real person. Enrique becomes suspicious if Ignacio/Angel is really the Ignacio he knew as a kid, and embarks on an investigation. But wait again, Ignacio doesn't want to be called Ignacio, claiming that he is now a fully transformed person called Angel, an actor trying very hard to get to play the part Zahara. The real Ignacio is the screenplay writer, who is trying to get Enrique the film director, another grown-up altar boy, to produce the film. The story of Father Manolo and the altar boys however is real. But wait, all this is just in a screenplay. The story of the young altar boys is told in a manuscript of a book entitled 'The Visit', which is used by one of the grown-up boys Ignacio, now a transvestite called Zahara, as a tool for blackmailing Father Manolo. Homosexuality and fetishism you'll almost always expect in an Almodovar film but there is less extreme perversity and violence compared with some of his other pictures. Similarly, we see the inimitable Almodovar feuding colours. ![]() ![]() The film opens with attention grabbing, definitive music (regardless of what mood) that is Almodovar's hallmark. Undoubtedly still Almodovar, Bad Education however is Almodovar melodrama, a little short of Almodovar masterpiece. It is, after all, not easy to surpass the achievement of Hanle con ella. Bound for Cannes release, Bad Education soon demonstrated that the apprehension is not unfounded. Spoilers Since 'Hable con ella' ('Talk to her', for which my summary line was 'Almodovar mellowing?') which some consider Almodovar's best, his fans have been looking forward to his next one with great expectation but also some apprehension as to how could he possibly tope it, in the sheer ingenious creativity, if nothing else. ![]()
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