Hable con Ella

Spain

Synopsis

TALK TO HER is a story about the friendship between two men, about loneliness and the long convalescence of the wounds provoked by passion. It is also a film about incommunication between couples, and about comm' couples, and about communication. About cinema as a subject of conversation. About how monologues before a silent person can be an effective form of dialogue. About silence as eloquence of the body, about a film as an ideal vehicle in relationships between people, about how a film told in words can bring time to a standstill and install itself in the lives of the person telling it and the person listening. TALK TO HER is a film about the joy of narration and about words as a weapor against solitude, disease, death and madness. It is also a film about madness about a type of madness so close to tenderness and common sense that it does not diverge from normality.

Director's Biography

PEDRO ALMODOVAR was born in Calzada de Calatrava, province of Ciudad Real, judicial district of Almagro and Archbishopric of Toledo, in the 50s. When he was eight, he moved with his family to Extremadura. There, he studied Primary and Secondary level with the Salesian Fathers and the Franciscans, disrespectively. His religious miseducation only taught him to lose faith in God. At that time, in Caceres, he started going to the cinema, compulsively.
At sixteen he settled in Madrid, alone, without family or money, but with a very specific aim: to study and make films. lt was impossible to enroll in the Official Film School, Franco had just closed it. Given that he couldn't learn the language (the form), he decided to learn the substance, and dedicated himself to living. lt was the end of the 60s and, despite the dictatorship, Madrid was, for a provincial adolescent, the city of culture and freedom.
He had many sporadic jobs but couldn't buy his first Super-8 camera until he got a "serious" job in the National Telephone Company of Spain. He stayed there for twelve years as administrative assistant. Those years were his true education. In the morning (from very early) he was in contact with a social class which otherwise he would not have known so well: the Spanish middle class at the start of the consumer era. Their dramas and misfortunes. A gold mine for a future story teller. In the evening-night, he wrote, loved, performed theater with the group Los Goliardos, made films on Super-8mm. He collaborated with various underground magazines. He wrote stories, some of which were published. He was a member of a parodic punk-rock group, Almodovar and Mcnamara, etc.
He was fortunate in that the opening of his first film in commercial cinemas coincided with the birth of Spanish democracy. After a year and a half of difficult shooting on 16mm, "Pepi, Luci, Born..." had its premiere in 1980.
From that moment, cinema became his second nature. He wrote and directed. And he lived, enough to be able to carry on making up stories that were alive.
With "All About My Mother", he won the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the Cesar, 3 European Film Awards, the David de Donatello, 2 BAFTAs, 7 Goyas and 45 other awards. The awards haven't changed either his perspective of the films he wants to make or his life, except maybe to add a certain pressure to both.




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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar

Written by: Pedro Almodóvar

Produced by: Agustín Almodóvar

Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe

Editing: José Salcedo

Production Design: Antxon Gomez

Costume Design: Sonia Grande

Make-Up & Hair: Karmele Soler

Original Score: Alberto Iglesias

Sound Design: Miguel Rejas

Cast: Dario Grandinetti (Marco), Javier Cámara (Benigno), Geraldine Chaplin (Katerina Bilova), Mariola Fuentes (Rosa), Rosario Flores (Lydia), Lola Duenas (Matilde), Leonor Watling (Alicia)

Nominations and Awards

  • European Film 2002
  • European Director 2002
  • People's Choice Award 2002
  • European Screenwriter 2002
  • European Actor 2002
  • European Cinematographer – Prix Carlo Di Palma 2002
  • Feature Film Selection 2002