Hable con ella (Talk to Her)

Title: Hable con ella (Talk to her)
Released: 2002

Plot Summary

Another great film by Spanish director Pedro Almoldóvar, Hable con ella is the story of the intersecting lives of two pairs, Alicia & Benigno and Lydia & Marco. Benigno and Marco meet in the hospital, where Benigno is the nurse taking care of Alicia and Marco visits his girlfriend Lydia. Both Alicia and Lydia are in comas from which they may not emerge, but Benigno believes the women are both capable of recovery and encourages Marco to "talk to her".

The film includes some essentially Spanish elements, like bullfighting and the dry olive-tree filled landscape of Andalucia, and also touches on some truly Almoldóvar themes: the mystery of the female heart, loneliness, isolation, and just plain strangeness (the silent film scene is one of the film's more bizarre moments).

Language Learning Notes

Benigno is generally easy to understand, although there are some scenes where conversations are relatively mumbled and not the easiest to understand.