Almodovar's wonderful Bad Education (Mala Educacíon, 2004) is a story about passion - not only it's dark and dirty side, but it's corrupt and violent side. Coming on the creative heels of his slightly unsettling Talk to Her, Bad Education revolves around a story of child abuse, forbidden love, catholic priests and drag queens. As if that wasn't enough, for any serious film buff, there's a fair amount of flirtatious, 'film noir' intertextuality going on at the same time.
Set in both Franco's 1960s Spain and a liberated Madrid in the 1980s, Bad Education is an almost uniquely male space, dealing with male bonds and male sexuality - or at least one direction it can go in. Having put female sexuality into a coma in 'Talk to Her', women are now banished almost entirely as the film focuses entirely on men and boys, moving from first homoerotic love and groping at the movies, to adult paedophile lust in the cloisters, and the fragility and victimization of transvestite identity.
A large part of the film's interest lies in the nature of the story-telling. Told as a story within a film/film within a film, this layering of what is really three narratives creates a complex narrative pattern. Indeed, much of the film's power comes from not understanding where the film is going or what is actually going on.
The opening finds Enrique, a 20-something successful film director in the middle of a creative crisis about his next production. Into the midst of this frame narrative walks an old school friend, Ignacio, clutching a typewritten story based on their childhood. This story is set in 1964, when the two school boys fall in love with cinema and each other, but are later separated by abusive and jealous priest Father Manolo. Enrique decides to use the script for his next film, and Ignacio's story, entitled 'The Visit', sets off a dual narrative with the plot switching relentlessly between past and present, reality and film sequences. A third narrative begins to merge the two narratives together: Enrique's film, Ignacio's identity, the priest's fate, playing out a complicated plot more deviant than a trip round Birmingham without your A-Z. As Almodovar himself says "It's like a triangle that becomes another triangle and another triangle in the future. It's like a triangle that becomes a vicious circle."
This glorious, disorienting experience is all part of the fabric of the film, which is subtlely hinted at from the opening titles. A glorious artwork of red, white and black reveals fragmented film posters, hanging in torn shreds from walls. This idea pops up throughout the film, in various guises, such as outside the now derelict cinema of Ignacio's youth, pictured left. As Almodovar cuts between the different elements of his story, from the past to the present, from any notion of truth to that of fiction; and from the real to the dominance of the screen, the significance of the opening titles begins to unfold. This is a story in pieces: lives in pieces, characters in pieces, identities in pieces and the viewer is given the task of somehow making sense of it all...or not as the case might be.
It's not just the story-telling that stands out. Bad Education is also notable for a range of great performances, particularly from Gael Garcia Bernal, whose recent lead roles in The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien have justifiably given him international star status. Bernal shows an impressive range in Almodovar’s film, moving from starlet to drag queen to indifferent con artist, impressing not just with his acting range, but, let's face it, his incredible screen presence and beauty. How many men are there in film history who have played the role of femme fatale? Probably not many, and surely none as mesmerizingly as Bernal.
Bad Education is just one of those must-see movies, and the kind of film that makes you want to go back and examine, or re-examine, Almodóvar's earlier work. It's certainly a very important addition to the restricted list of challenging modern cinema.
