BAD EDUCATION – Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, rated NC17

Enrique is a film director in a creative dead zone when a friend and lover (Ignacio) from his childhood walks through the door with a screenplay loosely based on their youth and abuse at a Catholic school. 

Before I get to the movie, my first big gripe is the rating.  NC17?  Really?  If this movie had the exact same scenes of heterosexual nudity and sex it would have been rated R.  Burns my biscuits.  Seriously burns my biscuits.

Tender and poignant school memories quickly turn dark as Father Monolo’s obsession with Ignacio separates the boys and leads to Ignacio’s loss of faith in God, and in himself.  Both the screenplay and the movie dart forward into a film noir of blackmail, drug addiction and guilt.  Father Monolo is definitely a villain, but not a cookie cutter one.  He is portrayed almost sympathetically as a man obsessed and in love. Gael Garcia Bernal (Ignacio, Zahara, and Angel) amazingly plays three different roles in the film with depth and passion.

This movie should be difficult to follow with different points of view, the fiction of the screen play and the reality of the past, but Almodóvar does a decent job of providing a smooth transition.  There are some continuity issues in day/night and timeline, but overall the movie has good flow and is reasonably easy to decipher.  I found myself struck by the amazing use of color and lighting in the film.  It does move slowly at times though, and although the film appears mainly through Enrique’s eyes, he is a rather flat character.

The theme of abuse is a sensitive one.  I found myself thinking that Almodóvar was not so much making a commentary about recent scandals within the Catholic Church, but about how suppression of a vital part of the self leads to dangerous obsession.  This sophisticated treatment of villain’s character let the movie become more than a preachy social commentary.  Three stars.  Definitely worth watching, but not top of my list.