"Talk to Her" Blogs and Blabs

Marco is in love with Lydia, a female bullfighter who is gored by a bull and sent into a coma. In the hospital, Marco crosses paths with Benigno, a male nurse who looks after another coma patient, a young dancer named Alicia. From Benigno's gentle attentiveness to Alicia, Marco learns to take care of Lydia... but from there, the story goes in directions that deftly manage to be sad, hopeful, funny, and creepy, sometimes at the same time.
Talk To Her is a movie about loneliness, the fragile connections between human beings, and the worlds we create within ourselves. Benigno is a lonely man, who had lived in isolation taking care of his mother for most of his life. Through his window he watches Alicia, practicing in a dance studio across the street, and falls deeply in love with her. This window is his only contact with the outside world, and Alicia becomes his entire world. Then Alicia is in a car accident and falls into a coma. Benigno works at a hospital as a nurse since his mother died. He serendipitously is hired to take care of her full-time, which he does with care and love and joy. He dotes on her, and tells her everything as if she were an imaginary friend. Although she is completely unaware of it, he is now her window to the outside world. Then Benigno meets Marco. Marco is a journalist who has fallen in love with the bullfighter Lydia, who has just been admitted to the coma ward after being gruesomely gored by a bull. Marco visits Lydia daily, while Benigno cares for Alicia down the hall. Benigno reaches out to Marco, which first frightens Marco because of Benigno's awkward lack of inhibition, but then they soon realize they share an intense yet one-sided love. They are both lonely men, who hide away from the world, and while they are limited in their abilities to connect sincerely with healthy human beings, they find themselves easily poring out all the love and locked up emotion inside them into their coma patients. This one-sided love for their coma patients slowly morphs into their own real friendship. Benigno supports Marco when Lydia dies, and Marco becomes the only one who will try to help Benigno when what Benigno believes was an act of love lands him in jail. Alicia finally wakes up, from what can only be described as giving birth to herself.
I loved this movie. I thought it showed the dark and perverse nature of men with compassion. It is excellently acted but it was so depressing that I felt I needed to watch sitcom after sitcom just to get over the melodramatic morose feeling of the movie. Pedro Almodovar also did a fantastic job as a director.