Bad Education

I couldn't get friends to go see this movie with me in theaters. You'd think an internationally known and respected guy like Pedro Almoldovar would have more admirers among the geeky film community of Los Angeles. Most often, it was the gay content that turned my potential movie mates off.

I don't mean to imply that my friends are homophobic. Okay, some of my friends are definitely homophobic. I have one friend in particular for whom "fag" is both a noun and a verb (as in, "why do you keep fagging me like this?")

I like to think jokes such as these highlight the absurdity of homophobia rather than the reality of it, but I may be deluding myself. Anyway, there were no takers for Almoldovar's homosocial psychological thriller Bad Education, so I had to wait to check it out on DVD. And I discovered that it's one of the Spanish icon's more entertaining and accomplished films, if not neccessarily the most amusing, charming or humane. While it's not an emotional masterpiece like the director's Live Flesh, Bad Education ranks among Almoldovar's most innovative and exciting narratives, a Hitchcock homage that covers a lot of territory in its tight hour and 45 minute running time.



As I mentioned, the film clearly echoes Hitchcock's mixture of dark comedy and high tension, and it also incorporates the Master's love of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks. With its frank, unabashed sexuality and sensuous, fluid tracking shots, there are echoes of Brian De Palma's great 70's thrillers.

Ignacio and Enrique came of age in a Franco-era religious school full of bullying priests who sexually and physically abused the young boys, and thus formed a tight and enduring bond. One of the preists in particular, Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho) fell in love with young Ignacio, setting the tragic paths for all three of these characters lives throughout the next 20 years.

The action begins when a stranger appears at the office of notable Spanish director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez). The young man (Gael García Bernal) claims to be Enrique's long-lost school chum, Ignacio, even though he looks nothing like the boy he was and doesn't remember key events in their young lives. "Ignacio" has written a story, based in part on the tragic circumstances of his and Enrique's situation, and as the director reads it, we see it enacted.

And it's here that the film gets complicated and far more interesting. In the fantasy/story sequence, Bernal portrays the hero, a coke-addled drag queen named Zahara who confronts a priest who sexually abused him/her as a child. Then, within Zahara's story, we see yet another flashback to actual events in Ignacio and Enrique's life back at the religious school. The various infidelities, double-crosses and reversals get complicated but never confusing.

This all comes together so well because of Almoldovar's mastery of the form. He's been making films long enough to really demonstrate confidence and, yes, balls in organizing a story with this sort of imploding structure. Bad Education as a film is almost entirely backstory - explanations about why certain people behave as they do, and what traumatic events have altered their viewpoint - and yet it feels vital and energetic, like any good noir mystery.

Though the film holds together thematically, and contains many interesting ideas about fate, love and the lingering effects of childhood abuse, I think it works best as an elaborate puzzle. Like other satisfying noir-romance-mysteries about past trauma, works like Hitchcock's Marnie and John Brahm's woefully underseen 1946 masterpiece The Locket, Almoldovar's film glides along, always remianing intriguing without ever fully giving the game away.

One more thought about the central conceit of the film: in the flashbacks, because they are not quite reflections of reality, but rather a fictionalized version of reality, the characters have all morphed or shifted in some vital way. Obviously, Ignacio has turned into a transsexual, but other characters have been altered as well, including Enrique (who has become a drunken barfly who takes Zahara home for a little how's your father).

I'm reminded of the transsexual "South Park" episode of a few weeks back. It also seemed to argue that transsexuals were purposefully creating artifice, pretending to be something they're not and asking us to accept it anyway. I disagreed with this viewpoint and basically found the episode insensitive. But now here's Almoldovar in a way suggesting the same case - that Zahara's artifice (pretending to be a woman) blocks her from confronting the pain of her childhood abuse. The character has become a hiding place for Ignacio.

And, of course, later in the film, when we find out even more secrets about Ignacio's true identity and where he has been in the years since his childhood, the layers of artifice increase. By the end of the film, you've been confronted with a dizzying array of experiences and information, intersecting timelines that link up in a variety of puzzling and troubling ways. It's a lot to take in, and all the actors acquit themselves exceptionally well considering the difficulty of the material.

Bad Education was a film I not only enjoyed, but enjoyed more than I expected. As I said, it's among Almoldovar's most interesting, if not most accessible, work. Surprising that it's his first film strictly in the thriller genre, as he seems to handle its tropes and pace quite well.