KIKA
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1994 Frank Maloney
KIKA is a Spanish film written and directed by Pedro Almodovar. It stars Veronica Forque, Victoria Abril, Peter Coyote, Alex Casanovas, Rossy de Palma. Rated NC-17--no one under 17 admitted because of sex scenes, graphic rape scene. English subtitles.
KIKA represents a return to the earlier, more vital energy and spirit of the older Almodovar films, the ones made before 1988's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (MUJERES AL BORDRE DE LA ATAQUE DE NERVIOS) made him an international star director. WOMEN ON THE VERGE for all its style and wit is an experiment in artificiality, like the deliberately unconvincing Madrid skyline as seen from the terrace of Pepa's (Carmen Maura) apartment. Or like the closing song, "Teatro puro," WOMEN is pure theatricality, all style, in which life is a chic joke made up of many little jokes. KIKA, to some extent, shares these qualities with WOMEN, but here the joke is a very dark one and Almodovar returns to something like the anger of his earlier, pre-WOMEN films, films like LAW OF DESIRE (1987) and WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? (1985).
And what symbolizes and encapsulates this dark, angry joke? Television tabloid "news" shows and the end of privacy. Victoria Abril plays Andrea Scarface, the last word is exploitative, invasive, and manipulative voyeurism, as host of "Today's Worst." She hosts it wearing dresses shredded, black, red, with artificial breasts exploding through the bodices, like Morticia Addams after a bad experience with a Cuisinart. She even highlights with makeup the scar that gives her her name. In addition, she cruises around Madrid on a motorcycle and wearing an outfit that makes her look like a Martian: her high-tech leathers featuring camera lights for breasts (ever heard a woman's breasts called headlights?) and topped off by a crash helmet with a surmounting camcorder. The video camera takes on a life and personality of its own in one crucial scene and the question is where is the human here--not the insensitive Andrea inside the suit, not the suit with its buttons and controls, maybe the camcorder? Abril is an extraordinary actress with staggering powers of invention, who can be sinister, funny, and pathetic at the same time.
Kika herself is played with exhausting energy by Veronica Forque, she of the hyperactive motormouth, a makeup artist who meets her future husband, Ramon, when she's called upon to make up his presumably dead corpse. Ramon is played by Alex Casanovas in a typical Almodovar male role--withdrawn, uncommunicative, secretive, a cipher. It's the women Almodovar loves to depict and explore in his films; men, he says, bore him. Kika gets to do a little growing up in the course of the film and it is she who must suffer the now infamous rape of the film, infamous because the scene is played for laughs. She's scared, she's in danger, she's mad at the rapist, a former porno star who's escaped from prison, but she also wants him not to take all afternoon. She has things to do. It's what comes afterwards that is the real rape in this case, the police, the husband, and especially the helmeted camera of Andrea who wants to interview the victim as she's comes out of the shower. This is the point that critics who condemn this film miss. There is nothing funny about this second rape. It's far and away the more damaging and leads directly to bloodshed and death.
Also in the cast and complicating the story are Peter Coyote as Ramon's stepfather and lover to just about ever women in the film, Santiago Lajusticia, as the rapist, and Rossy de Palma, she of the Picasso face, here playing Kika's lesbian maid and sister of the rapist. Almodovar is the consummate actors' director and he continues to get the most astonishing performances out of his actors.
KIKA has its faults. At 120 minutes, it is too long to sustain itself. It should have concentrated more on Andrea Scarface and less on Kika, a not very interesting person before her rape, as superficial as her makeup. Abril was supposedly given her choice of which character to play. She chose wisely.
Nevertheless, I highly recommend KIKA to you. It has the flash, wit, and style of WOMEN ON THE VERGE, the standard for better or worse by which all Almodovar films are judged, as well as the rage and satiric bite of his earlier work.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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