fitch

Ivan Reygadas, OP Contributor

Hitch, starring Will Smith (Men in Black) and Eva
Mendez (Training Day), and co-starring Kevin
James (television’s King of Queens) is not your
typical movie about finding the right words or
right moves to get the girl of your dreams. It’s
much more than that. If you are not (or have
never been) in love, this movie may not appeal
to you. But for those who are/have, it makes
you ponder the situation of love and how it was
that you,fell in love with your significant other
in the first place. At the same time, it makes you
ponder what your significant other sees/saw in

you. In this respect, the movie succeeds as a
romance.

      

The cure
for the common man.

As for the comedy factor, Kevin James con-
sistently steals the show, with his antics
repeatedly taking the movie from merely funny
to truly hilarious. And, in my humble opinion,
the title role of Hitch is probably one of the
best-suited roles of Will Smith’s career. Smith
portrays a real “suave” guy with all the right
words and all the right moves, but it’s when he’s
forced out on a limb and can no longer come up
with all the right words and moves, that the
“real”? Hitch comes out.

Hitch’s transition as a character is reflected
in Hitch’s transition as a movie—with the film
becoming funnier and more genuine as it devel-
ops. Hitch is definitely a must-see movie for all
ages, especially for those in love or those want-
ing to learn about love.

FEBRUARY 16/2005

 

: Orbs aid = enberhiinent ==

Schoolboys, and Iranssexuals,
and Mystery, Oh My!

Bad Fducation\es up to hype

Amy Zhang, The Peak (Simon Fraser University)

 

BURNABY, B.C. (CUP)—The genius of acclaimed
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar is due in part to his
ability to mix genres and styles, the old and the new.
Unfortunately, these qualities also underline both the
successes and the failures of his latest film noir-inspired
psychological thriller, Bad Education (La mala edu-
cacion).

Critics are already calling the film the most ambi-
tious project by Almodovar in the last 20 years, and
with music by Alberto Iglesias and starring the Latin
heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal, Bad Education has all the
makings of a successful Spanish Vertigo. Set in both the
present and the past, the film jumps back and forth
effortlessly between recounting the experiences of two
young boys, Ignacio and Enrique, in a Franco-era
Catholic school, and the events that follow their
reunion 16 years later.

Enrique, now a successful filmmaker, is visited by
Ignacio (Bernal), a struggling actor and predatory trans-
sexual. Ignacio brings with him the story La Visita,
which revives memories of Enrique and Ignacio’s
young love and the sexual abuse Ignacio suffered at the
hands of Father Manolo.

Combining elements of pop art and film noir, the
lyrical romantic beauty of the main characters’ early
childhood in a Catholic school is juxtaposed with both
the vivid exuberance of the recreation of the events in
La Visita and the pop-graphic vitality of the interac-
tions between the older Enrique and the returned
Ignacio—or Angel as he now wishes to be called. The
visual beauty, the quick, humorous dialogue, and a bril-
liant performance by Bernal successfully carry the
audience from one scene to another, testifying to
Almodovar’s mastery of film.

 

Almodovat’s greatest skill as a director is perhaps his

ability to keep us engaged in each increasingly convolut-
ed retelling of the story that questions the truth of the
previous narrative. At the same time, Almodovar is
capable of maintaining the uncertainty, danger, and sex-
ual tension that is crucial to any successful tale of
seduction and desire aiming to push our sexual and
moral boundaries.

The last scene of the film, in which a docudrama
style is adopted in an attempt to establish truth by fol-
lowing up on the lives of characters, is ultimately
overwhelmed by a single word. The screen zooms in
until it is filled completely with the Spanish word for
“passion.” Here, perhaps, lies the central focus of the
film: the exploration of forbidden passions for another
individual, and how far a person is willing to go in pur-
suit of their desires. :

Through the exploration of the abandonment of
moral boundaries for sexual desire, Almodovar refuses
to let us pass judgment on the actions of his characters.
Even the pedophiliac priest is ultimately portrayed as a
victim. Almodovar succeeds in this generosity, allowing
us to explore the limits of our actions without judg-
ment.

The failures of Bad Education, however, lie in the
untidy pieces of narrative that are left over from the
attempt to create a collage of different film styles.
Certain suggested narrative strains—such as the sexual
abuse of* Ignacio by his Catholic priest—beg to be
developed further. By the end, we are left wondering
about the character of Ignacio. Did he really die a trans-
sexual junkie? Can we really trust these recreated
scenes? Or are we once again forced to question the
boundary between fiction and reality?

Hungry for Ignacio’s story, this further attempt to
challenge the limits of narrative and question the rela-
tionship between fiction and reality felt a bit tired and
contrived. Ignacio, left as a fictional figure rather than a
real one, makes the film feel slightly clichéd, and takes
away from the initially developed emotional intrigue.

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