The sequence about the surreal science fiction film, where a miniaturized man enters his love's vagina, is as shocking and funny a sequence as you will see,...By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time"
"Talk to Her" is Pedro Almodovar's bittersweet love letter to the battle of the sexes. In this case, his film depicts 2 men gently and faithfully awaiting the return of their loves from coma. One communicates with her incessantly because he's her attendant, washing and massaging her while he talks. The other is a more manly, taciturn writer who mainly converses in his memory with his maimed
girlfriend bullfighter.
The women can't hear the men, so they are left alone to weep at the smallest bits of melancholy . These two men could represent the new age of sensitivity where the men now talk but the women can't hear. Because one woman is a bullfighter who was going to leave the writer for her former love anyway, and the other a ballerina who would never connect with her aide anyway, the androgynous issue is covered, perhaps signaling that women don't need men anymore.
The sequence about the surreal science fiction film, where a miniaturized man enters his love's vagina, is as shocking and funny a sequence as you will see, even if you revisit the Melies brothers at their wildest. Women are capable of swallowing up men until they are lost in the feminine mystique. No shrews tamed here.
Listening seems to be the major metaphor, but as the old joke goes, a man shouting in the forest would still be wrong. It's a provocative Almodovar at his best.
John DeSando vice-chairs the board of The Film Council of Greater Columbus and co-hosts WCBE's "It's Movie Time," which can be heard streaming at www.wcbe.org on Thursdays at 8:01 pm and Fridays at 3:01 pm.