Bad Education

Gael Garcia Bernal as "homme fatal"
This is the movie that confirms Gael Garcia Bernal's status as the most erotic male screen presence since Alain Delon doffed his shirt in "Plein Soleil." In this film he plays at least three characters, including Zahara, a drag queen, for which portrayal Pedro Almodovar, the director (who has a cameo in the film as a poolboy) has compared Bernal to Julia Roberts. Think sensuous lips. But most viewers, I believe, will prefer him as Juan, doing pushups on the floor of his brother's kitchen, or as Angel, diving into a swimming pool in his underwear. But even as Juan, in sunglasses at a museum in Valencia, Bernal may remind discriminating filmgoers of Barbara Stanwyck, in the famous grocery sequence in "Double Indemnity." Which brings me to an important point: Almodovar's film is many things--part autobiography, part exploration of sexuality--but it is above all a film noir, despite its bright colors, with Bernal as the "homme fatal." I think it works. Any fan of the genre will be...

Pandora's Box
Gael Garcia Bernal, playing Juan/Angel/Zahara is the centerpiece, the place in which the heart of this film resides, for it is his broken damaged heart that sets the tone and the focus of Almodovar's "Bad Education"

And at the core of Bernal's tour-de-force performance is his shredded psyche: broken apart by years spent plotting revenge for the drug addiction and childhood abuse of his brother, Ignacio. Juan is one of the "damaged people" of whom Tennessee Williams so often writes. And Almodovar has chosen to make Juan not only a hero but also a heroine, the femme fatale, Zahara.

Almodovar, never one to be squeamish or afraid of censure, is out for blood in "Bad Education" as he slices open and excises the sexual mores in Franco-era Catholicism in which child abuse was accepted as the norm. (Unfortunately, nothing seems to have changed much)

Moviemaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) gets a visit one day from a man claiming to be Enrique's friend from...

Tangled Tale of Exploitation, Ambition, and Revenge.
"Bad Education" is writer/director Pedro Almodovar's remarkably creative comment on sexual abuse among Roman Catholic clergy, but it is far from being straightforward or confined to one theme. The film weaves a complex tale of exploitation, deceit, ambition, seduction, and blackmail that places a story within a story and shifts back and forth in time. Sixteen years after they attended school together, Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael Garcia Bernal) visits Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez), who was his closest friend when they were 10 years old. Enrique is now a famous film director in the midst of a minor creative crisis. Ignacio is an ambitious actor looking for a job, and he has brought a short story he wrote based on their childhood experiences for Enrique's consideration. The story, entitled "The Visit", tells of a female impersonator named Zahara who by chance meets his old schoolmate Enrique, whom he loved as a boy. Zahara is eager to see Enrique again, but after he has carried out an...

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