GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
|
||||||
|
GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bad
Education Columbia
Tri-Star Home Entertainment, Director/Screenplay:
Starring:
Rated NC-17, 106 minutes |
Latin
Noir
Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education ((La Mala Educacion) is the most remarkable film I have seen in a long time. This will sound like high praise but it is, in some ways, queer cinema's closest equivalent to Hitchcock's Vertigo. People are not whom they seem to be, new identities are assumed, and memories create ideals that become more important than reality. |
 Almodovar
is one of the finest, as well as one of the most iconoclastic, queer filmmakers
working today. His worldwide acclaim goes way beyond the borders of queer
circles and his 1999 All About My Mother won the Oscar for Best Foreign
Film. Almodovar's films, as far back as the early 1980s, have always included
affectionate treatments of gay and transgender characters and his treatment
of sex, in all its incarnations, has been nothing short of groundbreaking.
He will also always be remembered for introducing Antonio
Banderas - who played gay in Labyrinth of Passions (1982) and
Law Of Desire (1987) - to international audiences. |
|
|
|
|
 As
Enrique reads the script, the cinemascope screen shrinks and we are treated
to a film within a film. Bernal appears again in this interlude as Zahara,
a drag queen who, along with a fellow drag performer (Javier
Camara), prepare to rob a drunken trick. Zahara is really Ignacio and,
when he rifles through their trick's wallet, he discovers that the man is
Enrique, his boyhood love. Zahara writes a love letter, in which he asks
if they can meet again, and leaves it on his beloved's pillow. |
|
 The
following morning, Zahara and his sidekick rob their boyhood church. Inside,
Zahara confronts the pastor, Father Manolo (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), and threatens
him with blackmail. Manolo is handed a story to read, entitled "The Visit,"
which triggers an extended flashback. The audience now learns that Father
Manolo is a pious pedophile who desired Ignacio as a boy. He was jealous
of Ignacio and Enrique's friendship and threatened the two boys with expulsion
when he found them hiding together one night in a lavatory stall. "I sold
myself for the first time that night in the sacristy," Ignacio writes. He
gave himself to the priest in order to save his comrade but the good padre
expelled Enrique anyway and Ignacio vowed that someday he would have his
revenge. |
|
 Enrique,
confronted with his past, feels energized and wants to make his first love's
story into a movie. But he also has misgivings. He is especially troubled
because, when he looks at his old friend, he doesn't see the boy he once
loved. Each man marks his territory; Ignacio wants to play Zahara in the
movie and Enrique rewrites the ending. The film eventually goes into production
but, when the real Father Manolo (Lluis Homar) shows up on the set for some
third act drama, we enter another universe entirely. |
|
 That
is all I will say about the plot except to note that, at the film's midpoint,
the rug is pulled out from under the protagonist's - and by extension, the
audience's - feet in much the same way that Hitchcock fucked with our heads
in the middle of Vertigo. I will not discuss this further except
to say that from this point on it is impossible to accept anything
that you see, or believe in its face value. |
|
 I've
mentioned Vertigo. By no means do I want to suggest that the plots
are the same; there is a similar feel to the story's central mystery, a
variation on a theme. Does Enrique attempt to re-create his boyhood love?
Not really, aside from telling him that he would look better without his
beard. But part of our tale does involve Enrique having to deal
with his past while coming to terms with the image of his first love. Memories
can lie and the truth isn't always up to snuff. |
|
| Bad Education is a truly unique blend of melodrama and thriller, with just a touch of camp, and it makes for a delicious stew. Here is a story which, in the wrong hands, could have easily turned into Valley Of The Dolls. But Almodovar is too accomplished a filmmaker to allow that to happen. | |
 There
is so much in this film to savor. The opening credit sequence deliberately
invokes Hitchcock, most especially Saul Bass' famous titles for Psycho.
Images are ripped, and torn bars and credits race across the screen. The
music is reminiscent of film noir with a touch of Latin romanticism. This
is Raymond Chandler with a transgender twist. Ignacio takes his role as
the mystery's femme-fatale to new heights by performing some of it in quite
fetching drag. The movie is set in 1980 when a post-Franco Spain was still
enjoying its sexual revolution. Sex is often centered around who is in power
in both the adult and adolescent parts to the tale. There is passion and
there is deceit. There's also a tragic tranny (Francisco Boira) who figures
prominently in the third act. |
|
 |
|
| There is also eye candy galore. Watch one of the greatest teases ever filmed when Enrique stands waiting in his swimming pool as Ignacio dives over his head. A Bruce Weber-esque shot of Ignacio getting out of the water, his white shorts plastered to his crotch, leaves nothing to the imagination. To some the sex might seem quite explicit (it certainly did to the MPAA, which gave the film an NC-17 rating) but, even though it is apparent what they are doing, there is certainly no hard core porn on display. Some of it is hot, some of it is funny. During the film within a film, Zahara is going down on the drunken Enrique, who falls asleep. Zahara lifts his head and shouts, in a gravelly Harvey Fierstein voice, "Hey! I'm sucking on your dick!" Almodovar has a knack for getting away with some of the most outrageous humor. Look also for a scene where Ignacio, in skimpy shorts, is the object of voyeurism while he performs the most provocative push-ups you will ever see. | |
 The
MPAA must have also been uneasy with the scenes involving the two boys.
Nothing is shown, yet the attraction between the two is unmistakable. There
is a lovely coming-of-age scene in which the two boys go to the cinema together
and watch a melodrama starring noted Spanish actress, and sex symbol, Sara
Montiel. (Earlier in this film within in a film, the adult Ignacio/Zahara
bases his drag on Montiel and performs one of her songs. Bad
Education is, in part, an homage to the Mediterranean gay
icon.) Both remark how beautiful their screen goddess is, and look now and
then and again at each other. Though we only see them from the shoulders
up, with theater seats in front of them, it is obvious what their wandering
hands are doing. Such scenes are usually considered charming when it's boy
meets girl, and it is no less charming here. |
|
 Their
tale marks the most moving scenes in the film. They meet that night in their
dorm's lavatory. Ignacio worries that they have just committed a sin while
Enrique shrugs it off because he's a hedonist (he tells his friend he found
the word in a dictionary and that it means "people who have fun"). Suddenly
they have to hide, and a truly terrifying scene wherein Father Manolo is
pushing open all the stall doors in the lavatory generates nail baiting
suspense. |
|
 Pedophilia
is a terrible crime, it is even more reprehensible when the perpetrators
are priests. But Bad Education is
not a polemic against the church, this theme is just one of the pieces
of a large jigsaw puzzle. The abuse is not shown, but a scene in which the
young Ignacio performs his duties as altar boy and removes the priest's
robes, following mass, takes on sinister overtones. Even so, Almodovar doesn't
dwell on the abuse. It is the springboard for the rest of the story which
has more twists than a rollercoaster. When the priest descends on the studio
set, the film takes a completely different turn that viewers should discover
on their own without any spoilers from me. |
|
|
More
on Pedro Almodovar Javier
Camara also appears in:
|
The
setting is Madrid in 1980. Bad Education
involves a film director, Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez), whose writer's
block is resolved when he receives a surprise visit from a boyhood friend.
And not just any boyhood friend; Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael Garcia
Bernal) and Enrique were in love when they were young adolescents at the
same Catholic boarding school. Enrique doesn't recognize him (and attributes
this to his visitor's beard) but welcomes him nonetheless. Ignacio is
a stage actor looking for film work. When asked if he still writes, Ignacio
- who prefers to be called now by his stage name, Angel - gives the director
a story that he penned, entitled "The Visit." Part of the story is inspired
by their adventures as children, he explains, and the adult section is
fiction.
Bad
Education
is loaded with colorful and unforgettable characters and the acting by
all is exceptional. Roger Ebert reports that Gael Garcia Bernal is a very
popular actor in Spain and compared his work to