Uneasy Education

Pedro Almodóvar is a grave robber. Stalking the scorched, neglected earth at society's fringes, his pace is easy, assured. He's been at this a while; he knows what to look for. Turning the soil, he plumbs down past the debris flung aside by polite society to glimpse what lies beneath. Just under the drug addiction, the fetishism, the gender crises – the tawdry desolation – he finds shards of humanity so bright and tenderly polished that they reflect back at us images of ourselves.

Except we're, you know, in drag with a needle stuck in our arm.

His latest film, “Bad Education”, is a disturbing and frank exploration of victimization and obliterated innocence. The narration isn't linear, but the film can be broken into three historically distinct sections. The first centers on the destructive forces of abuse and molestation. Two boys, Ignacio and Enrique, have their adolescent journeys of self-discovery stopped short by the most powerful figure in their life: the priest who runs the boarding school they attend. As the only father figure, spiritual or otherwise, in the whole movie, Father Manolo should be the ground upon which the boys grow into men. Instead he exploits them and leaves them wandering and broken, unsure of who they are.

Some sixteen years later, wearing lipstick and a skirt, Ignacio still hasn't figured that out. He is a writer now, or so he says, as he stumbles unannounced into Enrique's production company. He wants Enrique to make the story he has written about them into a movie.

The middle section, between childhood and their reunion, is the focus of that story. Enrique is unsure at first, but after reading it through, decides eventually that the story needs telling. The details soon come into dispute, though, and as Enrique looks deeper into Ignacio's past, it's unclear exactly whose story he's been telling.

The narrative and direction are cunning and complimentary. As Almodóvar folds in pieces of Ignacio's story and Enrique's movie, reality and fantasy become a vivid tapestry of delusion and coercion, expectation and desperation, hope and loss. After a while, it becomes hard to tell truth from fiction in the stories upon stories, but it's never tough to spot what's real. Almodóvar works it into every steeled gaze, every set jaw, every furtive glance, every posture and every pose. In his world, no one is innocent, no one is brave. Each character, in his own way, is a coward and an opportunist, relying heavily on past martyrdom to wash away present sins.

The redemption narratives these men spin for themselves are as twisted as the priest who set them on their paths, and Almodóvar suggests an institution that insists we will have salvation if we remain obedient has more wrong with it than a few pedophiles. For these men at least, there will be no happy ending.

The journey, though, might prove cathartic.

Even if his stories were linear and his direction flat, Almodóvar would be important because he forces the audience to admit the humanity and history of people we see every day and turn away from. There is no respite for those two hours. These oddities, these stage decorations from the periphery of our lives, become people. Like us they are tired, soul-hungry, beautiful, strange and despicable. Their selfishness and self-destructiveness are horrifying for the frankness of depiction and because we know how they feel.

“La Mala Educación” is on DVD now after getting nowhere near a Sandpoint or Spokane theater – it probably played nowhere between Seattle and Minneapolis. It might have hit Boise, those magnificent bastards. That's okay, though, we don't need their theaters. We are patient and technology is the great equalizer.

Rent “Bad Education”, along with any other Almodóvar film you haven't seen, and get a good look at yourself.