Live Flesh

Curious, seeing this after the smash hits of "Todo Sobre Mi Madre" and "Hable con Ella", because this movie sort of prepared the viewers to what was coming. Grabbing a solid and original story, Pedro Almodovar creates a movie that revolves around a strange set of characters, and on the process gives an excellent essay on the effect time has on people's lives. All the actors are top notch, specially the commanding Javier Bardem, who would later become an Oscar nominee with "Before Night Falls". Great music, cinematography and direction give this movie an even more satisfying look, and make this a well-achieved movie that ends up being the first part of an unofficial trilogy of Almodovar's best works.

This Pedro Almodovar movie was the second film – after The Flower of My Secret – where he toned things down and went for a more serious approach. Having said that, it's still very much a melodrama. Its story is simultaneously simple and complex. It basically is about how one gunshot changes the lives of five people. It starts out appearing one way but as we get to know the participants we discover their differing motivations on that fateful night. Everyone seems to be suffering because of the actions of another. Every character is a shade of grey, no one is innocent and the film is about guilt and redemption as much as anything. Once you think back on the story you only then realise how complex a web of deceit and betrayal has been woven by all of the participants. Some have also mentioned that it is an allegorical story about Spain's recent history. While there is an interesting opening segment set in 1970 in Franco's regime, I honestly couldn't tell you what the allegory actually is. Maybe it's a cultural thing or perhaps I'm just too dumb to have noticed. But regardless of this, Live Flesh can easily be appreciated without this.

Almodovar has always been the king of kitsch, the naughty, the pervert (who isn't anyway?), the generator of endless dirty language conversations, the good the bad and the ugly of the movie world. Well, he seems to have grown mature, but not tamed in that sense. He probably will be strongly criticized for the oral sex scene, on grounds that he is abusing disabled individuals, just like he was almost damned by feminists because of the looong rape scene in Kika. Well, although he seems to have moved away from his bright colors and chaotic chasing sequences, and although Live Flesh is to the best of my knowledge the first movie where he openly praises the post-Franco era, it was as tasteful as its predecessors. And who can build up such a web of events and relations better than Almodovar does, anyway?

Spain, more than most nations, has to deal with its ghosts. The Franco years were a time of enforced stasis, a period when no creativity was allowed to thrive, and progress of any kind was suppressed ruthlessly. A false mentality was imposed on the nation, a communal fantasy looking back in time to a supposedly innocent 'golden age'. Spaniards were forced to see themselves and their culture in terms of Carmens and castanets, fans and fandangos. A people was frozen in time for forty years, and fed on a diet of synthetic movies and novels which summoned up a sexless, crime-free rural idyll, Franco's concept of nationhood. While the West had the Rolling Stones, Spain had troubadors in sombreros. The galloping modernity which has transformed Spanish society in a single generation has given the young adults of today an interesting 'window' on history. While the West has moved smoothly from Sinatra to Sid Vicious, from Marilyn Munroe to Marilyn Manson, Spain has a deep chasm between today and yesterday. Almodovar is intensely concerned with this gap, and his films serve two functions in respect of it. They analyse the social forces which created it (and were spawned by it), and they help Spain to bridge the barranco. It is time now for Spain to move on. When Elena meets Victor for one final date, the purpose of the sexual coupling is to wipe out the guilt which clings to their shared past.

New and Old clash on every street corner. We hear a soundtrack of anodyne 'traditional' songs overlaid on scenes of black immigrants doing drug deals. Sancho is a model of old-fashioned manhood who tries, but fails, to castrate the New Man, Victor. The house left to Victor by his mother is out in the northern satellits township of Ventilla, a working-class ghetto of high-rise tenements, Franco's already-rotting 'solution' to Spain's social problems.

Cinematically, "Carne Tremula" is second only to "Todo Sobre Mi Madre" as an example of Almodovar's assured command of the film-maker's craft. Transitions are especially well-done. A bus door opens and we see, through the cab, Victor standing, waiting to board. This is the portal of movement opening for Victor, the boy with the gift of lifetime freedom of the buses (symbolically, the 'new' Spaniard, born to a life of movement). Clara remembers her first sexual intercourse, and looks at a photo of herself in First Communion dress. Both events were first communions, both were rites of passage, abandoning the childhood phase. Almodovar moves the action forward from 1980's Madrid to Barcelona in the Olympic Year (1992) by showing the olympic logo on the cycle track, viewed from overhead, as the cyclists cross it. To end Victor's prison sequence, a bus (always his symbol) passes right to left, 'wiping' the prison and revealing the free man. Sancho the housebound husband is re-introduced with power and economy when Clara crosses her own 'welcome' mat to be greeted by him. Fire, earth, ice and water are used as 'gates' in the narrative, marking new beginnings (for example, Clara's frying-pan catches fire because Victor distracts her by announcing the end of the affair). Isabel's waters break on the bus, and we see men in water at moments of 're-birth' (David in the bath, newly secure in the permanence of Elena's love).

Stalking is a strong theme, Almodovar inverting and perverting the idea of sexual arousal and pursuit. Voyeurism can be innocent and healthy (young Victor watching Elena in her apartment) but becomes sick when the watcher is impotent and jealous (David filming the Victor-Clara couplings). Victor pursues Elena, even wearing a wolf's head in order to close in on her.

Clara is the woman with no sense of direction, whose emotional life is arid. She depends on but does not love the useless Sancho. She loves but cannot possess the sexually potent Victor. The mutual gunning-down of Clara and Sancho is pre-ordained, both in the earlier attempt, and in the shooting by which Sancho launched the narrative.

Elena, like many young bourgeois adults, had a heroin phase in her teen years, but has put that behind her and leads a useful and caring life. However, character is fate. She cannot escape the consequences of her sexual union with Victor. The 'final date' is the powerful climax of the film, the fatal destiny to which all of these characters are tending. It speaks volumes of Almodovar's talent that his highly-improbable last reel, with all of the central characters converging on one spot, is entirely believable.

In a film predicated on contradictions, David is contradiction personified. The sporting champion with no life in his penis, the good man who cuckolded his friend and partner, the hero of the stand-off in the apartment who becomes the raging jealous spectator on the sidelines, David is both admirable and despicable. His obsession with basketball is psychologically neat - a sublimation of his damaged machismo - and also a devastating revelation. The wheelchairs swoop around the court in a Busby Berkley parody of athleticism, and the ball pops into the basket in clever mimicry of the coitus for which this is David's substitute.

And Victor? He is the picaro, the innocent who is always on the move, never comprehending the forces acting upon him, yet never defeated by those forces. His 'life on wheels' is the true life, in contrast with David's sterile life-in-death on wheels. Victor, alone of all the characters, grows because of his suffering. Franco's Spain was static, but Victor has broken free of that prison, and is dynamic. He moves. Thus is he the true victor.

Pedro Almodóvar changed the way of making cinema in Spain; and doing it, he has impressed movie watchers around the world. You have seen his movies; they are a mix of cruelty that includes honesty and passion. Not honesty in Almodovar's characters, but in the way they are written, showing a tough reality. About passion, well, it occupies a place in every person, but is not always shown; Almodóvar takes care of that.

He introduces you to the characters in the story, then he starts to develop a plot that you're going to see, even if it is predictable. Víctor (Liberto Rabal) has lost, or not, his virginity with one woman (older than him). He's not an expert when it comes to casual sex, but she wants to see this woman again, and doesn't understand why she acts like she didn't care what happened. The thing is he doesn't know she does it every week. Then we see David (Javier Bardem) and Sancho (José Sancho) working in their car. They are cops. David is honest and professional, Sancho is alcoholic and incontrollable; his wife, Clara (Ángela Molina), cheats him with another man. Sancho loves her, but beats her and keeps her locked in the house. The one who connects them all is Elena. Víctor fights with her, the police arrives, someone is shot and we see a frame that shows the movie some years later.

The person who was shot is David, who walks (well, he doesn't walk) in a wheel-chair. David saved Elena's life; they're married. Víctor is getting out of jail; he shot David. Sancho is in the same situation with his wife. Now Víctor is angry, and plans his revenge; eventually he meets Clara, and follows Elena, and everything is connected again, until the end.

Javier Bardem is excellent as David. He can cry while he talks and convince you that he is suffering. He is the finest Spanish actor, and it was wonderful to see him fighting against his character's decisions to do the things he has to.

Francesca Neri didn't seem Spanish while I was watching the film. She isn't, but she has the looks of a "femme fatally", and that was perfect for her role, which connected everything and had the strongest lines.

José Sancho gives a good support as Sancho, reaching the extremes with his face. His character is doomed, because what happens to him now is not going to stop, and the worst part is that he knows it.

Ángela Molina doesn't have the chance to shine, but still does a decent work, with what she has got. She can't be having sex with one only man, and she shows it.

Liberto Rabal doesn't show much acting talent, he's not the mos experienced in the cast, but somehow, when he talks, he seems not right, but perfect, for his role. Listen to him at the end and you'll see.

Almovodar is gifted and he proves it in each frame of this tale. You need to look at every part of the shot to see the details he is giving to the piece. Look at the sexual scenes; the balance he achieves: it's not so strong, but not soft either. It's subtle. His way of directing the actors is amazing. He writes the movie, and knows it more than anyone, so you know he is there to tell the cast what to do, and help them obtain their amazing performances. It's a visual style with life of its own.

I said it. There's cruelty and honesty at the same time. There's passion. There's betrayal, lies, sex. You see it in the characters, in their words. When David arrives home and sees his wife Elena in bed, and starts to touch her; she doesn't like it. "What's the matter?", he asks. "It hurts", Elena answers. "Why?", he says. And with a face that involves everything I'm talking about, she looks at him: "Because I've been having sex all night"