Romancefest 2015: Bad Education

Goddamn Pedro Almodovar is awesome. I've been slowly but surely making my way through the Spanish master's filmography over the years and film after film is colorful, fun, tragic, emotional, original and fantastic. 2004's BAD EDUCATION is no exception. Go read Ebert's review: it's better than this one.

Gael Garcia Bernal pulls double or triple duty in this film within a film within a memory within a short story within, within. Let me see if I can unpack it real quick: Bernal approaches a filmmaker (Fele Martinez) with a movie idea he claims is based on their childhood together as friends/lovers at the Catholic school they attended as children. The filmmaker doesn't immediately recognize his supposed long lost friend, but gives the screenplay a read anyway. It's both a re-telling of their time together as children as well as a fantasy about what meeting again later in life might be like.

As the filmmaker reads, the film plays out, and Bernal now stars as the character he wants to play in the movie, himself – imagined as a drag queen named Zahara who goes on a revenge quest to destroy the evil priest who molested him (or her) (Daniel Gimenez Cacho).

Without giving too much away, as the two conspire to make this film happen, reality blurs with fantasy, not all is as it seems, and more of the real story comes out, including a visit from the real evil priest (this time Lluis Homar). The movie jumps from the past to the present, with Nacho Perez and Raul Garcia as the younger versions of our two main characters, two boys who fall in love with each other at the movies. Almost every character in this movie is played by a different person at one time or another, seen through a different point of view or from a new angle.

If you're into Almodovar, just rest assured this has everything you love about him. If this is your first Almodovar flick, it's as good a place to start as any, and you're in for a treat. The opening credits bring to mind many Hitchcock movies, and the subject of the flick is reminiscent of VERTIGO. It's not a stretch to put Almodovar up there with a great like Hitch.