Critics reviews

It's not so much how Almodóvar is saying it, but what he's trying to say; just as in TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!, he's exploring traditionally feminine notions of family and nurturing through his male characters' distasteful behavior, exposing toxic machismo and all it implications. It's the definition of fragile masculinity as filtered through Almodóvar's pleasant irony, resulting in a film that's as enjoyable as it is revolting.

In its way, Talk To Her is as profound an inquiry into the secret hearts of modern urban loners as Todd Solondz's Happiness. Both have shocking truths to tell, and it is a measure of Almodovar's strengths as a writer and the mesmerising performances by Javier Camara and Dario Grandinetti that one's sympathy is so willingly yielded.

Stylistically Talk to Her is, as with most Almodóvar films, dazzling but never overwhelmingly so. The film takes on operatic sensibilities at times, as with its opening scene or the beautifully constructed bullfight sequence, in which Marco and Lydia's relationship comes to an abrupt but sadly foreseeable close.

In color, composition, and motion, Almodóvar’s film is a lush, elegant thing, and unlike most contemporary filmmakers, with their fingers always on the splicer, Almodóvar is unafraid to sit back and luxuriate in a moment, finding something gorgeous in an act as mundane as the placing of a bedgown on a comatose patient and improving upon the already breathtaking modern dance numbers (choreographed by the renowned Pina Bausch).

Talk to Her" combines improbable melodrama (gored bullfighters, comatose ballerinas) with subtly kinky bedside vigils and sensational denouements, and yet at the end, we are undeniably touched. No director since Fassbinder has been able to evoke such complex emotions with such problematic material.

It's a movie about being trapped in various kinds of prisons, spiritual, physical and finally literal... And we see that ''Talk to Her'' is not about sympathy but about loyalty, and the picture with its crafty twists of fate earns our loyalty as well.

The actors are outstanding, illuminating four different views of loneliness. But it’s Camara’s tour-de-force performance that anchors the film, that shocks and unnerves us. Talk to Her goes beyond tears. It’s unmissable and unforgettable.

Almodóvar is a great admirer of actresses... and his films can always be counted on for their female performances. But here, men carry the weight of the film, particularly Cámara, whose unflagging gentleness hides a swirl of confusion... Talk To Her finds the gentle rhymes between tragedy and moments of happiness, and between the despair and rapture that keep its characters in the thrall of love.

There isn’t a whisper of camp in Talk to Me: The dialogue scenes have a flat, understated realism... Almodóvar created it, and its surreal Freudian landscape is one of the mostly wildly funny—and believable—portraits of desire ever put on film. The movie is the strangest experience: a matter-of-fact thing that swallows you whole.

One wonderful thing about soap opera is that-since all is permitted — you never know what’s going to happen next, and this bracing unpredictability keeps “Talk to Her” consistently interesting and entertaining... Almodovar’s greatest natural talent may be his ability to master a dizzying variety of tones within a single film. Thus, as the postmodernist he is, he can miraculously, and shamelessly, pull out all the emotional stops, and yet make fun of this very surfeit of melodrama at the same time.

Almodóvar's stories have always been improbable, even nutty, at the literal level but coherent and satisfying emotionally and poetically... There's still a fabulist at large in "Talk to Her," but the attempt at psychological realism is new, and Almodóvar has brought an extraordinary calm to the surface of his work. The imagery is smooth and beautiful, the colors are soft-hued and blended. Past and present flow together; everything seems touched with a subdued and melancholy magic.

Talk To Her seems less about the communication between men and women than it is an evocation of the rebirth of the body and spirit... Nothing here may be simple but Almodóvar makes it all seem so effortless.