Cinemania

I was never one for Almodovar’s loony, OTT melodrams, and even though Live Flesh is still a tad on the schematic side, its nice to revisit where he started the “mature” phase of his career. This phase can usually be marked by the first act involving some kind of freak debilitation or death. After this inciting incident, characters inevitably learn how to cope in nutty ways that bring out the best and worst in them. Live Flesh is a strange Noir (I tentatively label it as such — often Almodovar’s Fellini/Hitchcock suturing overshadows any strict genre) in that we are never given a subjective protagonist — do we side with the honorable paraplegic cop (played with tortured dignity by Javier Bardem) or the wrongfully imprisoned young man? The effect is disorienting but refreshingly so; we are forced into a detached perspective that lets us enjoy the irony like a macabre cartoon. Not great Almodovar — doesn’t achieve the heart-break or formal mastery of All About My Mother and Talk To Her — but vintage Almodovar and surely the first step in his marvellous career renaissance.

Rating: 7.5/10