BAD EDUCATION d: Pedro Almodóvar
La Mala educación / Bad Education (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cast: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Javier Cámara, Petra Martínez, Nacho Pérez, Raúl García Forneiro, Francisco Boira, Juan Fernández, Leonor Watling
PAST IMPERFECT
One of Pedro Almodóvar’s best, most complex, and most daring films, La Mala educación / Bad Education twists all the conventions of the film noir genre to deliver an intelligent, touching, and quite disturbing film that works as a psychological study of shattered minds, as an indictment against hypocrisy and abuse of power, and as a vivid demonstration of the director’s love for the art of cinema. The cast, headed by Gael García Bernal, is uniformly excellent.
Synopsis:
Madrid 1980: Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is a young film director in dire need of inspiration for his next project. Unexpectedly, a figure from the past, Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), reenters his life. Ignacio is now a struggling actor in dire need of an acting gig. One option would be for Enrique to adapt Ignacio’s mostly autobiographical short story, "The Visit." At first reluctant to rekindle the old friendship, Enrique starts reading the short story, which brings out a flurry of hidden emotions to the surface.
Enrique is transported back in time to his boyhood at the Catholic school where he (Raúl García Forneiro) had met Ignacio — then a beautiful boy (Nacho Pérez) endowed with a rich singing voice. In the short story, the two boys discover love, sex, and the movies, but their affair is cut short by the jealous Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who is madly in love with the angelic Ignacio. Years later, Ignacio, now the transvestite Zahara, returns to blackmail the pedophiliac priest. Zahara needs money to have a sex-change operation.
Enrique decides to make a film out of the gripping short story. However, he must also come to terms with the fact that the boy he once loved has returned to his life. Or has he? The young man who calls himself Ignacio may not be who he says he is. But why would he assume Ignacio’s identity? And how would that affect Enrique’s relationship with his newfound muse? Past and present, memories and reality, film world and real world intertwine to the point where the truth is nowhere and everywhere.
Notes:
Pedro Almodóvar has stated that, despite so many cinematic clues to the contrary, La Mala educación is not autobiographical. Almodóvar asserted that he has never been sexually abused by a priest and that he did not fall in love with a fellow grade-schooler.
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