Bad Education

Almodovar’s latest is such a messed up muddle that it is hard to know where to start.

I guess starting with the music is never a bad place, and the music in this is never bad. Alberto Iglesias put the soundtrack together and it is by turns campy, classic, and deeply haunting. It reminded me a lot of Lynch’s soundtracks in that it was eclectic, but not whacky; tied to a theme but not thematic (whatever that means); and largely in the back ground unless you stopped to listen at which point you realized how weird it was.

This great soundtrack makes for a fine compliment to a movie that I am coming to really respect – the plot has so many twists and turns that it starts to seem simple – kind of manufactured. But the key to this is the line “You changed the ending” – because the original short story ending is never known. The ending of the movie is a blundered note written by a dying junkie. What is the “story” what is the “meaning” when there is absolutely no trust worthy naration & the naration is based on another naration which was designed to be used for blackmail.

By totally destroying the narrative trust of the film – and then rushing into a film noir paradoy – further complicates matters.

As does the fact that a film maker is not the lover of movies & the writer is – the writer who is dead. A story being plagerized by an imposter. the path of the movie from inspiration to production is a large part of what the movie is trying to deconstruct. And deconstruction works very very well on this – the shocking homo erotic aspects of the film are completely undermined by the films morbid fascination with film making – with costumes and character – plot and developement.

When all is said and done there is very little left to talk about then the soundtrack – a soundtrack which is very very good.