watched this last night. it was recommended by someone who reads the blog but doesn’t comment (and i’m hoping that perhaps she will now). i liked it very much but am not sure if i agree with the ny times et al that this is a perfect film and almodovar’s best. some of these reviews focus on almodovar’s take on genre, noir, in particular, and yes, this is a very cleverly done noir. or more accurately it is a blending of the noir with high melodrama (almodovar’s great preoccupation). of course these two genres do seem like mirror images–the cynicism of the noir being perhaps the flipside of melodrama’s immersion in pure emotion–but maybe this wouldn’t have occurred to me if i hadn’t seen this film. the film isn’t just a formal exercise in genre re-invention–it explores desire, narrative desire in particular (again the territory of noir and melodrama) and cinematic desire. at the centre of all this desiring is gael garcia bernal (who everybody desires). however, i felt that the film, which has this glossy sheen that all of almodovar’s recent films seem to have, ends up holding the audience out–i didn’t feel emotionally drawn into this narrative the way i was with all about my mother. others?
another note: the film was rated nc17. however, there’s no sexual activity here that seems to merit this rating. i’m assuming that it is the mere fact that the activity in question is homosexual that drew the rating. but we don’t see genitalia any more than in a history of violence and that film’s sex scenes (especially the oral sex scene) are far more protracted and explicit. sexual organs are occasionally outlined against cloth, but far more innocently than in the average beer commercial.