Worth: $17.50
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Cast:
Gael Garcia Bernal, Fele Martinez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Javier Camara
Intro:
… unapologetically queer, filled with eroticism, pithy one-liners and lip-synching; all of which hide a dark heart that beats beneath the surface.
Released in 2005, Bad Education (aka La Mala Educación) is Pedro Almodóvar’s response to Film Noir. It’s unapologetically queer, filled with eroticism, pithy one-liners and lip-synching; all of which hide a dark heart that beats beneath the surface.
In 1980s Madrid, filmmaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) is looking for his next inspiration by flicking through the newspaper for other people’s tales of tragedy. Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal) enters his office, claiming to be Enrique’s first love from boarding school. He brings a short story he has written – The Visit – which he says is based on the fleeting but powerful love they shared.
From here, Almodóvar takes us into Ignacio’s tale, where Zahara (Bernal again), a trans woman in the 1970s, confronts Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho), the priest that abused her, by making him read a short story she has written about him called The Visit. If the priest fails to give her money for gender reassignment surgery, she’ll publish the tale for the whole world to see. The story enthrals Enrique, and he quickly options it for adaptation. Ignacio’s only stipulation, aside from now wanting to be called Angel, is that he is the one who gets to play Zahara.
Bad Education is about memories and, to an extent, what we recall, how we remember, and how we see ourselves. Are we the hero in the story, or will we always see ourselves as downtrodden by those above us? As Enrique reads Ignacio’s tale, the audience sees how he envisions everything, including the moment supposedly based on his youth. We accept them wholesale, only later to see them played word for word on Enrique’s set. Through Zahara, Ignacio writes a reunion that may have happened between him and Enrique, had life taken a different path. When Enrique decides to change the ending for more impact, it’s understandable why the writer cares so much. After all, who is Enrique to do this to his story? These are his memories of what happened and what could happen…
Or are they?
From the moment Ignacio steps through Enrique’s door, Almodóvar drops hints that everything is not as it appears. However, regardless of what Enrique learns, it doesn’t stop the filmmaker from hurtling into an intense sexual relationship with the writer-now-actor. Things become further complicated when the real Father Manolo, Manuel (Lluís Homar) comes a-knocking.
The film’s central performances are faultless. Bernal flits between naïve and unnerving effortlessly, as his character’s lies catch up with him. He’s matched in no small part by Martinez, who, to some extent, is the film’s hero but still comes across as a bit of a bastard, who only looks out for himself. Flicking between timelines and fictions, Almodóvar creates a deliberate confusion that blurs facts and fantasy in the same way some of his characters reconstruct their past. That’s why the ending can be a bit of a letdown. We get a resolution, but it might not be what you want. Having been in these people’s lives at such deeply intimate moments, you’d be forgiven for wanting something that leaves you happy – that wrongs have been righted. But then, that’s not how real life works, and Bad Education knows that.
