Talk to Her

Pedro Almodóvar follows his international success All About My Mother with an offbeat drama that explores the friendship of two men brought together under unusual but strangely similar circumstances. Benigno (Javier Camara) is a male nurse whose apartment overlooks a dance studio run by Katerina (Geraldine Chaplin); he often sits on his balcony and watches one of Katerina's students, Alicia (Leonor Watling), and he finds himself becoming infatuated with her. When Alicia is severely injured in an auto accident that leaves her in a coma, Benigno discovers she has been admitted to the hospital where he works, and he spends his days caring for a woman he now deeply loves but has barely met. Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is a journalist who was assigned to interview Lydia (Rosario Flores), a well-known female bullfighter whose on-the rocks romance with another toreador, "El Nino de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernandez), has made her the focus of the tabloid press. During Marcos' interview with Lydia, he goes out of his way to treat her kindly, and she appears to return his attention. During the bull fight which follows, Lydia is gored by the bull, and is now in a coma; Marco is certain his interview broke her steely concentration, and he spends most of his days at the hospital, convinced her injuries are his fault. Alicia and Lydia are both housed in the same ward of the same hospital, and in time Benigno and Marco become close friends, bonding in their shared devotion to women who cannot return their affection. — Mark Deming