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I haven't seen all of Pedro Almodóvar's films but I've really liked his last two, All About My Mother and Talk to Her. The plots of his movies are quite complex and bizarre. And his new film, Bad Education (in Spanish with subtitles) is no different. In fact, even though I saw the movie and have read and re-read the plot summary, I have to say this is one story that I had trouble following. This may have something to do with the fact that I fell asleep in the middle of it. The basic plot involves two young boys who were best friends at school. One of them is abused by a priest who is one of their teachers. The two meet again as adults after not seeing each other for many years. The film has lots of flash-forwards and flashbacks from childhood to adulthood. One of the friends has written a story about their time at school and the other, a director, wants to make it into a film. But not all is as it seems. It's bad enough that there are multiple actors playing the two main characters and also the priest. But some characters are not who they pretend to be and others have operations to change their gender so it all gets a bit confused. Or at least I was/am confused. And then there is a movie within the movie with characters from the movie within the movie playing other characters in the movie.
All I can say is that one of the actors who plays multiple roles in Bad Education is Gael García Bernal who was one of the two kids in Y tu mamá También and also appeared recently as Che in The Motorcycle Diaries. He is great as usual. But somehow this movie just didn't catch my interest. Maybe it is that I've seen one too many movies about a person who was abused as a child. It seems like every other movie I see has this as a plot device. Whatever it is, I just wasn't interested in any of the characters. It's not that the plot is too outlandish. It's not as weird as Talk to Her which was about two women in comas. Other people liked it better than me so maybe I just didn't get it. I'll try and get more sleep before my next movie.