Viva Pedro - The Almodovar Collection (Talk to Her/ Bad Education/ All about My Mother/ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown/ Live Flesh/ Flower of My Secret / Matador / Law of Desire)

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Movie Reviews of Viva Pedro - The Almodovar Collection (Talk to Her/ Bad Education/ All about My Mother/ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown/ Live Flesh/ Flower of My Secret / Matador / Law of Desire)

Movie Review: Viva Pedro - a must have for Almodovar fans!
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Viva Pedro - The Almodovar Collection (Talk to Her/ Bad Education/ All about My Mother/ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown/ Live Flesh/ Flower of My Secret / Matador / Law of Desire)

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 (Pen?lope 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 Almod?var needn't fret--as always, Almod?var'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 Almod?var'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. Almod?var 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 Almod?var 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 Almod?var'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 Alomod?var 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. Almod?var ( 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 Almod?var's point. -- Tom Keogh

Bad Education
Writer/director Pedro Almod?var'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 ?ngel (Gael Garc?a 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, ?ngel 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 Almod?var the opportunity to movingly suggest that people will pay any price to ensure that their stories are told. -- Steve Wiecking

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Art House & International DVD Video

• Drama