Kika

When a film begins with a keyhole bordered image of a woman undressing, sufficient precautions should be taken. When Pedro Almodóvar begins a film in such a voyeuristic fashion, everything seems right in the world.

Such is the opening sequence of Almodóvar's 10th full-length feature, Kika. A twisted tale of murder, rape, incest and just about every other adjective describing a vulgar or sinful act, Kika is at times hard to watch but usually even harder to turn away from. But while its tangled web of intertwining characters and story lines is compelling enough not to lose interest, the manner through which it maintains that interest does not prove to be worth the entertainment.

You're probably wondering why I would be driving you away from a film that sounds so engaging. If you are familiar with Almodóvar's work, it will be much easier for you to both grasp and handle this film. If you are not familiar with Almodóvar's work, this is not the place to start. If you have heard of Almodóvar's reputation but have never seen his films, this is not the place to start. In any other remotely similar situation, this is not the place to start.

I am only so relentless because Almodóvar is one of the greatest Spanish filmmakers of our time. He has a stunning catalog of films and is somewhat of a hero of the art's counter-culture. With a reputation for pushing the limits, Almodóvar is usually successful in delivering even the most perverse films in a tasteful manner.

That is where Kika fails: It is full of content but lacking delivery. If the film took itself seriously there would be much more to work with. But with the direction it chose, trying to be a dark (pitch dark) comedy, the subject matter is too tasteless to work.

To prove my point, let's do a little role playing. I will be the enthusiastic screenwriter pitching my story to you, the money-hungry studio executive half-heartedly listening to my idea for the next screwball comedy:

OK, so Ramón is a young man whose mother commits suicide for reasons that may or may not point to her unhappy marriage with Ramón's stepfather, Nicholas. Three years later, the stepfather and son move in together. One day while Ramón is presumed dead, a young woman named Kika is sent to apply makeup to his corpse, only to witness his miraculous revival. Kika and Ramón soon begin dating and she moves in with him. Eventually, Kika decides to make it a family affair by secretly having sex with Nicholas, Ramón's womanizing stepfather.

This is when it gets good.

The witness to everything is Ramón's lesbian housemaid, Juana. She has an insane brother who, as an adolescent, had sex with all sorts of animals but then moved on to raping the neighborhood girls. Being the great sister that she is, she started having sex with him so that he could "let off some steam" instead of pursuing his new hobby. His destructive path soon leads him to jail.

This is when it really gets good.

Years later, Juana's brother escapes from prison and tracks her down to the apartment at which she works. The fugitive plans to pilfer a few cameras from the apartment until he discovers the sleeping Kika. Against his sister's pleas, he rapes Kika for what seems like hours. The rape is called in by a peeping-tom across the street and an investigation ensues to find out who was involved, or rather who wasn't involved.

Sound funny? I didn't think so. And with such despicable characters, it is nearly impossible to find anyone, or anything, to laugh at. The most frustrating part about the film is that Almodóvar could have made this into a powerful drama, as he did with Talk to Her and Bad Education. All the elements are there, it's just in the completely wrong genre. It's like trying to turn Schindler's List into a sitcom.

But turning Kika into a drama would involve a few changes, especially Verónica Forqué as Kika. She is completely over-the-top and not once convincing. She adds nothing to her part and is especially painful to watch during her emotionless and even smart alecky rape.

The rape scene itself is the film's biggest red flag. No matter how hard you try, even if you are Pedro Almodóvar, making comedy out of such an emotionally charged issue as rape will prove improbable if not impossible.

With that said, Kika is a blow to Almodóvar fans who find themselves defending his films as artistic not licentious. Instead of an earnest film by a standout director, we are given an indecent soap opera with questionable direction. But we'll forgive you Pedro, nobody's perfect.

Although the film is ostensibly about "Kika," she is actually only one character featured in this raunchy, ensemble comedy.

The plot here is all over the place! This is not necessarily bad--one character ties into another character's life and the focus of the movie moves in a circular manner which eventually returns to our heroine, the naive but lovable Kika (well-portrayed by Verónica Forqué).

This film is funny! It's a combination of "There's Something About Mary," Woody Allen at his zaniest, and "Sex and the City." Good for a laugh, especially for the poor dubbing of Peter Coyote's Spanish.

Verónica Forqué is Kika, a cosmetologist who gets called in by writer Peter Coyote when he finds his stepson, Àlex Casanovas dead. He wants the younger man looking better before he calls in the mortician, so she applies some make-up and... well, to make a long story a little shorter, he's not dead. The two younger people start living together while Miss Forqué carries on an affair with Coyote, until one day....

No, it's too complicated to give a precis. Most plots occur when plans collide. In this feature from Pedro Almodóvar, the movie is a collection of sexual kinks that collide into incidents, and several of those incidents collide into a story, although which of those incidents make what plot isn't clear until it's all over. Roles include a serial killer, Peeping Toms, a porn actor on the run from the police, a dead mother, and a woman with what I can only call a camera gimp suit, fitting for PEEPING TOM.

Are all these sexual incidents supposed to be funny, red herrings or the point of the movie? Is there a serial killer? Does any of it matter? In Almodóvar's color palette in this movie, what is the significance of the color yellow? There's a lot of black humor in this one, and that might be enough for someone looking for a shock comedy, but I have the feeling there's more.... or perhaps, not having more to say, Almodóvar substituted a slowly revealed plot.

Kika is a movie whose plot sounds tasteless beyond belief if merely read aloud. After all it features an extended rape scene played for laughs; the rapist himself is a porn star who has sexually assaulted so many girls that his sister forms an incestuous relationship with him to take his mind off raping even more women. This is hardly typical comic fare it has to be said. Imagine if in 1979 Mel Brooks had decided to make a spoof of I Spit on Your Grave, the results would have been an absolute travesty. That's what the synopsis of Kika makes you think of. However, Kika was made by Pedro Almodóvar and for some reason he seems to be capable of making even the most grossly offensive material so completely ridiculous it comes at you in reverse and can be alarmingly funny. The rape scene in Kika is comedic and before watching the movie I simply could not understand how such a thing could ever be.

The film is named after the cosmetologist played by Veronica Forqué. But the movie is not really her story, it has several memorable characters. Ramón is a young photographer whose mother commits suicide. Nicholas is his womanising step-father. The latter hires Kika to work on the corpse of Ramón, who comes back to life unexpectedly and embarks on a relationship with Kika. Kika's maid Juana is a lesbian who is in love with Kika, her brother Pablo is the porn star rapist. All the time in the background on the television is Andrea (a.k.a. Scarface) the host of a reality TV show that celebrates real life tragedy, death and destruction. The movie concludes with an unexpected serial killer plot strand.

It's true that the story is somewhat chaotic. There are so many separate ideas in here that the film seems a bit unfocused. But because it is essentially a comedy this isn't really so much of a problem. While there is a lot of silly humour, the film is mainly a media satire. With this in mind the most important and memorable character is Andrea who is kitted out in some fantastically over-the-top Jean-Paul Gaultier outfits, including her street gear which includes a helmet with attached movie camera. Victoria Abril is really excellent in this role. She is simultaneously wicked and sexy at all times. The scenes of her broadcasting her show from a stage are the most visually iconic in the movie. She roams the streets of Madrid intrusively filming scenes of grieving people and aftermaths of violent encounters. She is the black heart of Kika.

Despite the controversial moments it's simply impossible to take the events depicted at all seriously. Almodóvar's typical colourful aesthetic is present throughout and the tone is consistently absurd. This means that he gets away with material that would have been contentious otherwise. As it is, Kika is very entertaining.

What everyone in the press seemed to miss about this film was that it was a spoof on the media and especially the talk show mentality which has come to dominate our lives. The central figure of the film is not so much Kika as it is Caracortada (scarface) who runs a real life television program featuring live footage from video cameras. She chases down much of this footage herself, having a camera inserted into a helmet and flying around town on a motor scooter. We are drawn into this web -- during the middle of a rape sequence, the rapist actually says something funny -- and in the audience with whom I saw the film when it premiered, many laughed (and then somehow gasped that they were laughing in the middle of a rape scene). That is as nearly perfect as black comedy gets. Following the rape, Caracortada interviews the victim and asks "How big was he?" Isn't this indicative of the intrusiveness of media in our lives? How did the press and so many commentators miss it?