MIT Lecture Series Committee

Rated R
106 minutes

Bad Education (La Mala Educacion) (2004)

In an obscure parochial school in rural Spain, two young boys, Ignacio and Enrique, fell in love. But the boys were only eleven, and the affair was broken up by a priest and schoolmaster named Manolo. The priest, however, wasn’t simply enforcing the rules. Father Manolo had already laid hands on Ignacio, a sweet-faced choirboy, and he wanted him entirely for himself. Pedro Almodóvar’s extraordinary new movie, which is both a summary of his career and a deepening of his recent style, opens sixteen years after the affair, in 1980. Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), now a young actor, brings a manuscript to Enrique (Fele Martínez), who has become a well-known movie director in Madrid. The manuscript chronicles the boys’ friendship and what happened to Ignacio—he became a drag queen and a blackmailer. We see the story enacted; later, Enrique turns it into a movie, and we see that being filmed, too, at which point the priest, now an ex-priest, shows up, and we hear his version of the events. The truth of what happened to the grownup Ignacio and Enrique emerges in pieces: the three narratives, as they expand and correct one another, become a trio of mirrors producing endless off-angle reflections. The movie asks: Is love possible between men, or is it possible only between innocent boys? [www.newyorker.com]

Sponsored by MISTI.

Always provocative and original, this time Pedro Almodovar reinvents film noir -- spinning an intricate web of desire, deceit, mystery and murder from a queer, Catholic sensibility.
      -- Susan Tavernetti, Palo Alto Weekly. Read this review.