Live Flesh (1998)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Victor is a proletarian guy, born on bus by a mother working as a prostitute (shown in an overlong introduction and pointless to the rest of the movie) who falls for Elena, an upper class junkie. Actually, he just has casual sex with her once and becomes erotically obsessed with her.He stalks her to her apartment and stubbornly refuses to leave her alone. A fight ensues and Sancho and David, a couple of cops appear on the scene. David gets paralyzed by a gunshot and ends up married to Elena.Victor gets to jail, but he is still obsessed with Elena and continues stalking her once he gets out four years later. Already unconvincing, the story takes a turn for the absurd when Elena shows a growing interest for Victor, who continues to confuse obsession with love.In the meantime, Victor is also sexually involved with Clara, Sancho's wife (very believable plot twist). Clara is giving him lessons to become the best lover in the world, Victor's top ambition so as to astonish Elena with his performance. It sounds like a demented plot, but I am not making it up.Probably one of the weakest Almodovar's films, it contains the inevitable steamy sex scene, which are Almodovar trademark and it is disgraced even further by an absurd "happy ending", which sees stalker and prey happily together, while Elena is giving birth to their child on a car (back to the start, in a sort of circular move).P.S. to make the matter worse, throughout the whole movie Victor blames Elena, David and everybody else for his misfortunes, conveniently avoiding to notice that the whole drama arose from his obsession.

I am wondering about how this film portrayed fidelity, or specifically the lack thereof! It gives the impression women in Spain will casually cheat on their husband if they feel like it. Elena did not seem to care how much it would hurt her husband and she tells him of her infidelity in a detached manner. Is this a Spanish thing? A European thing? I also noticed in several French films the French women are portrayed as hopping from bed to bed without much care or regret for the men in their lives as long as they satisfy their base carnal lusts. This is sad if true and portrays them as very shallow women. I think this is also a big problem in America. Since sex is viewed now by many as just another recreational sport. Does anyone know of modern films from Spain which portray a higher level of fidelity?

Unfortunately, Cruz is not long in this film. She is a prostitute who give birth on a bus. The story is really about her son, whom we join 20 years later.Now, hang on. Victor (Liberto Rabal), her son, is infatuated with Elena (Italian beauty Francesca Neri), but she is just a junkie who is more interested in seeing her dealer than him. They scuffle and the police (David and Sancho) come. Sancho's wife is fooling around, so he is drunk and gets into a fight with Victor and a gun goes off injuring David. David (Javier Bardem) heads off to a life of wheelchair basketball and marriage to Elena. Victor goes to jail. When he gets out, he takes up with Clara (Ángela Molina), Sancho's wife.If you are not confused yet, it gets more interesting as secrets are exposed. Pedro Almodóvar has written and directed another interesting film. It ends just as it begins, but in a dig at the repressive Franco regime, with a nod to freedom.It is a comedy, a detective story, a thriller, a drama - a bit of everything. - An Almodóvar paella for the eyes.

Having had sex with Elena the week before, Victor returns to her flat to try and see her again. However Elena was high when it happened and has no memory of it and no interest in refreshing her memory, but when Victor refuses to leave they start to fight and Elena pulls a gun, which goes off when Victor knocks it away. The police are called and David and his bitter, drunkard partner Sancho respond. A struggle ensues after a brief standoff and while Victor and Sancho wrestle on the floor, the gun goes off and David is hit. Four years later Victor is released from prison, David is in a wheelchair and has married a clean Elena while Sancho is still trying to keep his relationship with wife Carla together. Victor's release brings these individuals back into contact and unleashes the emotions of that night again.Having just watched Volver and found it to be slightly below the standards of many of Almodóvar's other films, I decide to revisit Live Flesh. Aside from the opening cliché, this film is mostly free of his comic backdrops and the touches of absurd melodrama that often accompany some of his more exaggerated characters (this isn't a criticism so much as an observation). Here the film moves quickly from Victor's birth into the fateful event that sees him jailed and we find ourselves in a serious story that is well delivered. That the narrative is unpredictable and perhaps a tad unlikely is testimony to the realism in the characters because their emotions and motivations within this mix of guilt, hate and regret are contradictory and complex – just as they would be in real life. But yet somehow Almodóvar holds it together and makes it engaging and, amazingly, convincing. I want to talk about how he turns this story into a tale I believed in but somehow he does; perhaps because he keeps it so raw and intense throughout, infecting even the sex with the emotions that exist within each character so that even those acts are borne of so much more than desire.Almodóvar also draws impressive performances from his cast which is a great help in pulling off the intensity of the tale. Cruz will be the name everyone knows but she only has a tiny role to play. It is hard to pick one stand out performance from Bardem, Neri and Rabal because the three of them are so convincing and seem to have totally engaged with their parts despite some of the actions being hard to accept on paper. Molina and Sancho are both good but their material is on the edge of the film and they aren't given the same opportunity to explore.Overall this is an impressive film that is raw and intense to the point that it compensates for the stretches within the plot. I can see why some viewers dislike it because it does take some swallowing but it is the impassioned and convincing delivery from director and actors that makes it as engaging as it is.