Unlike "Adaptation," though, "Bad Education" goes on, and in this way it retains its heart and soul. Romance turns to farce and tragedy to comedy as the self-consciously cinematic style gives way to the silliness of a movie-within-a-movie.
I was fully prepared to embrace it and love it as a sincere period romance.īut without warning, the film turns itself upside down and becomes an exhilarating meta-commentary in the vein of Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" (complete with crocodiles). Indeed, the performances are so endearing, the cinematography so warm and luminous, that this segment of "Bad Education" could easily exist as its own self-contained movie. Probably the most romantic segment of the film, it alludes even to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Henry Mancini's "Moon River" hasn't been employed so creatively since last year's "Angels in America"). It begins as a tender coming-of-age story, interspersed with boarding-school flashbacks reminiscent of such French fare as Louis Malle's "Au revoir, les enfants" and François Truffaut's "L'argent de pôche," although I sensed a lot of Fellini in the mod outfits, feathery hairstyles, and picturesque bicycle-strewn streets. In "Bad Education," he takes this device to breathless, upper-atmospherical levels, for with each twist, the film takes on a new genre. (Interestingly, "Bad Education" has given me a new appreciation of "Talk to Her." The two films share a lot of themes - false identity and self-creation, the willful self-deception and fantasy of falling in love, the spiritualization of aesthetic beauty - not to mention a hypnotic use of music, an indifferent attitude towards women, and a few actors I recognized.)Īlmodovar's genius in both "Bad Education" and "Talk to Her" is his ability to set the scene, stringing the audience along, lulling it into a sense of comprehension and security, and then suddenly turning the tables with a twist of such dizzying magnitude that the mind, reeling, forced to give up on trying to understand, must just relax and allow the movie to take over - miraculously, all without leaving the audience feeling manipulated. Truth be told, it was the promise of Gael Garcia Bernal (whom I've loved since "Y Tu Mama Tambien") in drag that piqued my interest in seeing "Bad Education." The only other Almodovar movie I'd seen before this was "Talk to Her," which I was on the fence about, but if Gael Garcia Bernal was involved, I was happy to give Almodovar another shot.
For one thing, to describe the plot would be to give away the twists and thus spoil its surprises but for another, it's impossible to take a great work of art and put it into words.
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