There is an interesting feel in Pedro Almodovar's HABLE CON ELLA. The film starts and finishes in a theatre, and two characters who eventually meet and create a bond are sitting in close proximity of each other, moved by the drama playing itself on-stage. Javier Camera and Dario Grandinetti play Benigno and Marco. As TALK TO HER begins, they are both watching a play about two women, both mimicking each other's actions, both looking disheveled and with white night gowns. What neither of them know is that they will meet through the most unlikely of ways.

Javier is a loner, a man who lost his mother and has an ambiguous sexuality, who works as a nurse in a hospital. He spies at Alicia, a young dancer (played by Leonor Watling),and we see his desire. He bumps into her on the street, walks her home, and notices her father is a psychiatrist who consults from home. So he sets a session in which he sort of declares he is a homosexual, while Alicia takes a shower. Before he leaves he takes an object from her room, not before he bumps into a naked Alicia and makes up a flimsy excuse as to why he is there. However, he will lose her to an accident which will leave her in a coma.

Marco is a reporter assigned to interview the famous bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) right at the moment she is going through some tough moments since her ex-boyfriend, another toreador called "El Nino de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernandez) has left her the object of media fodder. They become close, but a fateful match with a bull leaves Lydia also in a coma, hovering between life and death in the hospital where Benigno works and takes care of the also comatose Alicia. Marco, while taking care of Lydia, wonders if his interview could have broken her concentration and led to her situation.

It's here when Benigno and Marco meet, and their meeting becomes the fulcrum of HABLE CON ELLA. Benigno opens Marco to the idea that love needs not have a response to be true -- he confides his love for Alicia -- and one sequence is truly disturbing: Benigno's fantasy sequence in which a shrinking man penetrates his wife's vagina, shown in black and white, betrays what can amount to a pathology, and its eventual denouement, something I won't reveal, creates a series of events that accelerate both the moral of the story. Love sometimes can create actions we would deem as monstrous, even when we may not see them as such. Almodovar handles his risky material with incredible taste -- it is rare to see this kind of subject matter on screen -- but Almmodovar makes it seem natural even when at its core, such love can be frightening.

It would not be unexpected to come away conflicted about this movie. On the surface it's a moving story about personal relationships gone unrequited, but the tenor of the story takes a drastic turn when it's revealed that a comatose patient winds up pregnant by means of the male nurse assigned to her care. Told in turn via flashback and present day, an underlying message of maintaining hope in miracles is a good one, and Benigno Martin (Javier Cámara) is a sympathetic character, right up until the point he makes his admission to friend Marco (Darío Grandinetti). Up until that time, one feels there may have been some other hospital employee who might have used Benigno as cover for a horrific violation of the young woman in a coma. But it suddenly becomes a story of a perverse individual who no matter how he might have rationalized things, committed an act of bizarre consequence. I don't think it helped that the silent film clip of the 'shrinking lover' bordered on the pornographic with it's inclusion in the picture. And then, as icing on the cake as it were, the final scene suggests that Marco will soon take up with the former comatose patient Alicia (Leonor Watling). It was not revealed in the story whether or not Alicia was ever told about her stillborn baby, one would have to assume she became aware of it at some point. But to suggest that the two would somehow get together in a meaningful relationship is not a sequel I would particularly care to experience.

Many, many of the films of Pedro Almodóvar are creepy--and it's a rare one (such as "Volver") that isn't. Some are super-creepy but I can get past that because the films are so well written and directed ("The SKin I Live In" is a good example). And, some are just so creepy and downright nasty that I feel like I need to take a bath after seeing them ("What Have I Done to Deserve This?"). Well, "Talk to Her" falls somewhere between these last two categories--perhaps a bit towards category #3! While exceptionally well made, it is just gross and nasty and, perhaps, might be seen as a weird endorsement of deviant behavior.

The film revolves around two men who love women who are in comas. One is a reporter who has fallen in love with a female bullfighter who was put into a coma after an unsuccessful bullfight. Another is a creepy guy who works at the long-term care facility. I say creepy because later you learn that his prize patient, who he dotes on lovingly, is a woman he was obsessed with BEFORE her accident that left her in a coma. Being with her and taking care of her is his life. However, it gets MUCH, MUCH worse. Later, this creepy little $&@* rapes the comatose woman. Folks learn about this when she ends up pregnant--pregnant and in a coma! There's more--and, in a way, it ends up looking almost like the film is endorsing the rape. Sort of the 'all's well that ends well' plot twist.

As a guy who was a counselor years ago that worked with sex offenders, I found the film pretty sick. Part of this, I am sure, because of the work I did and my experiences (I now feel that therapy with sex offenders is pretty much a waste of time). But part of this is that the film just seems to almost romanticize a guy who is sick and gross and a criminal. See the film for yourself if you'd like. I just think Almodóvar stepped over the line with this one from being entertaining and very well made to being a bit depraved.

By the way, although I am NOT a person who in any way endorses PETA and many of the extremist animal rights folks, I did find it disturbing seeing a bull tortured and killed for the film. Yes, I know bullfighting in legal in many places but it just seemed wrong to use the animal this way. Eat 'em, fine. But slowly killing an animal when it wasn't necessary, I am not fine with that.

Also, at one point, Lydia says her father was only a banderillo. This is a person who works in the bullring and their job is to torment the bull by sticking metal spikes into its back before the matador enters the ring to eventually kill the animal.

Finally, what is with that giant vagina fantasy sequence?! In a surreal or absurdist film it would have been pretty funny but here, once again, it's rather disturbing.