TALK TO HER: La voz y el cuerpo de las mujeres

Pedro Almodovar's movies are about the body. Whether his movies are intense dramas, outrageous farces, or charged melodramas, or some combination of the three, he looks at consent, autonomy, transitioning, and sexuality. Talk to Her remains one of the few movies where Almodovar examines the male gaze, and in each one men prove themselves to be incompetent, helpless, or worse, predatory. Talk to Her centers on the voice and body of the women in comas, and how men project their own stories onto the silenced and the still. 

La voz de Lydia

Lydia is a bullfighter, who suffers a horrifying injury during one of her matches. Her boyfriend Marco sits by her side at the hospital, dutifully searching for some kind of hope. Benigno advises Marco to talk to Lydia, because perhaps she can hear his voice. But it's really Lydia's voice that needs to be heard. Lydia is somewhat an enigmatic figure in Talk to Her, even more so than Alicia. That's because unfortunately Lydia dies from her coma, her secrets and desires locked away in her mind. Her survivors are left to piece together what she wanted, and yet it's another way for people to speak for or to speak over Lydia. Lydia's voice gets cut off in multiple parts. Take for instance the TV interview she gives, where the host starts asking questions beyond Lydia's comfort level and she leaves. Marco first feels attraction to Lydia at this point even though she doesn't reveal anything about her in the interview (perhaps where his fascination comes from). 

One point where Lydia's voice is actually heard is her scream when she sees a snake in her house. Marco drops her off and drives away, he hears her scream and turns back. But even here Lydia gets cut off because Marco makes her serious phobia about him, as it recalls his ex-girlfriend's same phobia. Marco tends to make anything about him; even his intense emotional reactions to performances center the experience around his tears and memories (in the opening scene, Benigno notices Marco's tears during the dance perhaps taking his attention away from the dancers to Marco). When Marco finds out that Lydia dies through a newspaper article, he laments that he wished he had been told. That’s the first (only?) reaction to her death, a woman he loved and cared for.

The most profound silencing of Lydia is that she never gets to tell Marco what she was going to tell him after the bullfight. In the car, she says they have to talk after the fight. Marco says they’ve been talking for an hour. “You,” Lydia replies. “Not me.” We never get to hear what she wanted—needed—to say. Her unfortunate accident and coma left her without voice. Her former boyfriend claims she wanted to end it with Marco to be with him, but even this could be a projection. Or it could be Lydia’s voice coming through from beyond her coma. We don’t know what Lydia truly wanted because people are speaking for her. Even if she wanted to leave Marco for her former lover, what was her reasoning? What was the cause of her unhappiness? Lydia’s silence means we might never know what was in her heart.

El cuerpo de Alicia

Alicia is a dancer, who gets hit by a car and has been in a coma for several years. Benigno is her nurse, dedicated to her care. He often goes above and beyond for her, knowing her body and her routine so intimately. Benigno looks benign to the people around him—perhaps a homosexual who is inherently nurturing and maternal. But his name is ironic: he is actually a predator. He is so obsessed with Alicia that he projects an entire romance onto her and feels entitled to her body. His handling of Alicia’s body becomes sinister upon reflection, and his crime against her is perverse, shocking, and unconscionable.

The obsession began when he spied her in dance class; her body is graceful, lithe, enchanting. He sneaks into her house, catching her out of the shower. The scenes of his bathing her and tracking her periods begin to feel like ownership.  That Alicia lands in Benigno’s care is almost like some sort of cosmic joke. He thinks he fell for the Alicia who is a talented dancer and a charming, sweet young woman. But he can only “have her” when she is comatose and vulnerable to him. It is wrong how little Alicia is able to own her body when she is in the coma. Even as her body is healing, more trauma is being inflicted on it. Even before the rape, Alicia is consistently touched and groped without her knowledge or consent.

 

Unlike Lydia, Alicia survives her coma and has the chance to reclaim her life and her body. How she feels about her illness and her rape is still a mystery, but perhaps she is focused on healing and getting back to her form of self-expression. We see Alicia returning to her dance studio, doing physical therapy. She looks sad being on crutches watching her fellow dancers, but there is determination too. She attends a dance performance with her teacher, where Marco happens to catch her eye. Marco being Marco he makes this about himself and barely acknowledges that Alicia suffered so much. Alicia’s body will heal, beyond the transgressions against it. Perhaps she will find true love, not the distorted and obscene love that Benigno felt for her.

El amante menguante

This brings me to El amante menguante, or Shrinking Lover, the silent film within a film. The film is a replay of Benigno’s “relationship” with Alicia (and I mean those quotation marks with heavy irony). At the climax of the film, the shrunken lover Alfredo climbs along his scientist girlfriend Amparo’s naked body and enters her vagina, living there forever. Benigno says he was disturbed by this film, and as he tells Alicia about it he seems nervous and sinister. The sequence ends with an animation that heavily suggests Alicia’s rape, and Benigno’s cadence is darker than ever. Indeed, something is turning in his mind: the sleeping woman feeling pleasure as a man penetrates her, becoming one with her forever (Benigno wants to marry Alicia). Benigno sees himself as a small (or metaphorically shrunken) because he’s ostensibly a “beta” male unlike the macho Marco. In the silent film, Alfredo shrinks down because Amparo needs a human subject for her weight loss formula and the experiment goes awry. Benigno too sees himself as a noble lover, perhaps rescuing Alicia from her condition.

Pina Bausch

Talk to Her begins and ends with performances of famed dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch's work. The first one has women moving about a stage strewn with chairs and men moving the chairs. Both Benigno and Marco are moved by the performance (Marco crying of course). The women on stage are seen like Lydia and Alicia, eyes closed and seemingly without agency, and the men are there for protection, like Benigno and Marco seeing themselves as rescuers. The women are manipulated by some unseen force it seems, another allusion to Lydia and Alicia's lives being decided for them while they are asleep. 

The film closes with Marco and Alicia (and her dance teacher) at a Basuch performance. Here Bausch is passed around from man to man like both Alicia and Lydia's fates are somewhat decided for them. Benigno literally forces himself on Alicia, and Marco watches Alicia from Benigno's apartment and makes contact with her at the theater in the last scene. Lydia switches from Marco to her old boyfriend. Like I said above, even that is coming from another man not Lydia. Talk to Her ends with a more romantic dance as Marco and Alicia flirt from a few rows apart. MARCO Y ALICIA appears on screen, indicating a love story is brewing. But the dance teacher's worried looks suggest it won't be a happy ending.