No Nuns on Drugs? Awww...
If you've read anything about Talk to Her, the latest offering from Spain's provocative post-Franco-phile, Pedro Almodovar, you might get the impression the director is settling for a more restrained middle age. Much of his earlier work took bizarre twists and turns, in which the outlandish acts or strange obsessions of his characters were designed to startle, to jolt. He had a hell of a good time challenging the social and cultural mores put in place by the Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who reportedly is still dead). True, Almodovar is much gentler this time around. The rich strings of the score; the warm, loving cinematography; the ease with which he draws us into the strange, unrequited loves of Marco (portrayed by Dario Grandinetti) and Benigno (Javier Camara) - it all helps us feel comfortable in the hands of a master filmmaker.

True, also, this could be Almodovar's straightest film: No transsexuals, nuns on drugs, men committing savage acts in the name of lust for each other, no comical rape scenes... But please don't be fooled. Almodovar still is hardly conventional in the characters and situations he creates, and let's be thankful for that. Talk to Her, after all, is about two guys who love women in comas. First we meet Benigno, a male nurse with a soft, almost effiminate voice, a man who lived reclusive years as his mother's caretaker before turning to the incapacitated Alicia (Leonor Watling), whom he serves exclusively when she arrives in his medical clinic comatose following a car crash. He can cut hair, do nails (skills learned through beauty school correspondence courses), and he has no qualms telling Alicia's father he's gay so he can continue to be close to her. Never mind that he's rubbing down her thighs as he makes this "confession."

Against Benigno's cuddly pudge, Marco counters with a stooped, reedy frame, a stylishly bald dome and stubble on the jaw. His sonorous voice comes across reserved, eyes taking in more than he'll ever say. Marco's worldly experience - journalist, travel writer, lover of a famous female matador named Lydia (Rosario Flores) - couldn't seem further from Benigno's cloistered existence. (Does this guy ever spend time outdoors?) But Benigno has an understanding Marco can't reach: He has forged a connection with a loved one lost to the waking world. It's almost like he can talk to ghosts.

Persistent Vegetative State = Love
These two men come together over the women they love - women who, we learn through their doctor, exist in persistent vegetative states (PVS, in the doc's shorthand). For Marco, PVS has wrecked his hopes and dreams. Here's a man who sets out to write a feature on Lydia, a strong but complicated woman who fears snakes and harbors romantic skeletons, and winds up as her boyfriend instead. Then, just when he seems prepared to replace his own heartsick memories with the thought of a future in mature love, a bull gores Lydia and leaves her suspended in a netherworld beyond Marco's grasp. Benigno, meanwhile, can't really argue with PVS. It's delivered his girlfriend on a platter. We learn he barely knew Alicia in her waking life - in fact, his primary conception of her came from staring out his apartment window as she practiced ballet in a studio across the street - and even made an appointment with her psychiatrist father so he could do some reconnaisance in her apartment. ("Don't freak out," he tells her when she exits a shower and bumps into him. "I'm harmless.")

So Benigno ain't so benign. But once she's in his care, he's able to merge his profession with his passion. As he lovingly repeats daily rituals of bathing, moisturizing and massaging her body, he talks to her as if she hears every word, recounting dance performances and films he's seen, enumerating the ways in which his emotional world has evolved. He's trying to be the man he believes she would love. "These last four years have been the richest of my life," he tells Marco after Lydia arrives in the same clinic Alicia inhabits. Groping, doubting, Marco reminds him of the impenetrable fortress of PVS. Benigno shrugs and responds, "Where would anyone be without faith?"

Empathize with the Deceitfully Delusional
We know he's deceitful, and possibly delusional, but by the time Benigno brings inevitable disgrace on himself, we can hardly despise him for long. That's part of the game with Almodovar: He's hooked on a feeling for each of his characters, as if he can't paint their portraits until he knows exactly where the soft spot lies for each. He has a wonderful knack for showing us these folks in the same sentimental, motherly way he sees them. Likewise, each carries a piece of the director. Almodovar's love of performance artists - singers, dancers, actors - is well documented, and we see both men deeply moved by art. Marco, in fact, weeps more than once as a dance movement and a song dig tunnels to his subconscious. Almodovar asks that we empathize with these men and gives us ample reason to heed his call.

All well and good. But if we're going to shed tears or utter plaintive sighs for Benigno and Marco's plight, the least we can get is a few good laughs in return. There, too, Almodovar delivers. How about a hilarious silent film in which a dapper but portly gent drinks a weight-loss potion that shrinks him to Lillputian proportions, then takes refuge in his lover's vagina? When Benigno sees this flick - and I'm not convinced it isn't a creation of his imagination -- he's baffled and aroused, and the aforementioned disgrace isn't far behind. Throughout the film, too, characters offer us a quick laugh with their amusing phobias and banalities - human elements that Almodovar tweaks deftly, like a hand on a radiator knob releasing steam. (Lest we dwell too long, for instance, on Alicia's shock at finding Benigno in her house, her father's receptionist answers the phone and offers this gem: "Oh, hello, Lola. I've just taken an elephant-sized dump." Cut to the next scene.)

Disasterous Romance CAN Be Fun!
So as melancholy and ruminative as it might seem, Talk to Her never drowns in its undercurrents of loneliness, loss and mortality. The movie gives us two romances that seem futile, even disastrous, on their faces, but we also get an invigorating buddy flick that cherishes Benigno and Marco's growing loyalty to one another, and offers a sense of wandering fulfillment in the everyday. As Benigno says after reading Marco's travelogue of Cuba: "They're a people who have nothing and invent everything." He identifies with this quality, as would Almodovar, as should anyone who sees this film.