LIVE FLESH (CARNE TRÉMULA)(director/writer: Pedro Almodovar; screenwriters: Ray Loriga/Jorge Guerricaechevarria; cinematographer: Affonso Beato; cast: Liberto Rabal (Victor), Francesca Neri (Elena), Javier Bardem (David), Jose Sancho (Sancho), Angela Molina (Clara), Penelope Cruz (Isabel), 1997 - Spain)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
It is a politically oppressive climate in the Madrid of the 1970s, with the dictator Franco in power. A woman gives birth on a city bus during Christmas time and the city honors her and her new born son, Victor (Liberto), with a lifetime bus pass.Victor's mom supports her son by being a prostitute.
The film flashes to 20 years later and we see Victor, and he seems to be a social misfit, angry and disappointed that the beautiful, druggie, Italian diplomat's girl Elena (Neri), the one he made love to (for him it was the first time he ever made love) in a public toilet a week ago, has broken her date with him because she thinks he is a jerk and a lousy lay. A disasterous evening follows, as he tries to force his way into her apartment to get an explanation for why she has rejected him, as cops are called to the scene, and he ends up shooting and paralysing one of the cops, David (Bardem). That is the cop Elena is immediately smitten with upon seeing him enter the room. The other cop, Sancho (Sancho), goads Victor unnecessarily into trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand and the gun goes off hitting David, causing the injury. Sancho, in response to the inward tension that was eating at him, suspecting his wife of cheating on him, took out his jealous hatred on the unfortunate Victor. So goes a story filled with coincidences, frame-ups, despair, psychological traumas, political digressions, lies, revenge, Biblical allusions to redemption, and marriage-go-rounds.
Victor is released from prison after serving 6-years, a time he spent bulking-up, reading the Bible, learning Bulgarian (that's a funny one!), and swearing he would learn how to make love to a woman.
Victor, upon his release from prison, immediately makes contact with and starts an affair with Sancho's wife (Angela). Her husband is the cop who caused his arrest.
He also finds that Elena is married to the paralysed cop, David, who is now a star basketball player on Spain's special olympic team. Elena cleaned up her act and is working as a director of a school, where he finagles his way into a job there since he is so naturally good around children. His motive in returning to see Elena, is to take her to bed and show her how he has become a good lay and to show her what she is missing by not being with him. The only problem with his strategy, is that she is not happy to see him.
There are too many coincidences for me to be wholly convinced that I am not being manipulated into accepting a story with a certain political agenda to it, but there are so many wonderful gripping and beautifully done scenes, that I found I was taken in by the relationships going on and curious about what would happen to these folks, and glad that Almodovar (Dark Habits, High Heels, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) has chosen to make a film this time that has a story that makes some sense. I found most of his other films to be basically sexually bizarre, with storylines that were not particularly lucid.
Clara, who is only a minor figure in this story, nevertheless, her story is the one that moved me the most. Her failed marriage and her need to be loved and love someone, was the most pathetic characterization in the film, outside of Victor's.
The strength in the film was in the showing of the strong erotic links to each of the main characters in the story through Victor's eyes. Elena showed that she could change from the strung-out druggie depicted in her first encounters with Victor, into becoming a respectable wife and do-gooder. Victor could become the lover he never was and find a way to redemption for his past injustices. His story is the most challenging one, and the one that is hardest to comprehend. He is symbolic of modern Spain.
Almodovar has shot a sophisticated film about characters who really develop character-wise and who are in-tune with the times they live in. Almodovar, by his intermingling of the past and the present with the strange mixture of politics and religion that changes with the times, has created a fascinating look at Spain in the 20th century. What he shows, are the diverse ingredients found in modern day Spain that makes his country so unique.
The closing optimistic scene of the politically new Madrid, the one without the ruthless dictator Franco, who died of a heart attack in his bed, is opposite from the opening scene of the oppressively sullen Madrid. This film is definetly one of Almodovar's more resolute efforts.
REVIEWED ON 9/4/98 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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