Talk to Her  

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Talk to Her (Spanish: Hable con ella) is a 2002 film written and directed by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, starring Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin and Rosario Flores. It won the 2002 Academy Award for Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and the 2003 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film's themes include the difficulty of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, secrets and infidelity, and the persistence of love beyond loss.

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Plot

Benigno (literally meaning "benign" or "harmless" in Spanish) and Marco cross paths when they both attend the same dance performance, only to eventually meet again at a private clinic where Benigno works. There he is the personal nurse and caregiver of Alicia, a beautiful dance student who lies in a coma and with whom Benigno has become obsessed. Marco, a journalist and travel writer, is at the clinic to visit his girlfriend Lydia, a famous matador who is also comatose after being gored by a bull. As the men stand vigil over these women, the story unfolds in a flashback and flash forward motif, telling the lives of the four with respect to their relationships. Marco leaves Lydia when her previous lover informs him that they had reunited a month before Lydia's accident.

Marco leaves Spain for Jordan to write a tourist guide, where he reads in a newspaper that Lydia has died in her coma.

Meanwhile, Benigno is accused of raping Alicia, who is discovered to be pregnant, believing their contact to be love. It is not revealed whether Benigno is guilty of raping her, but it is strongly implied. Benigno is put into prison in Segovia for this, and a short time later he ingests a large quantity of pills to try to put himself into a coma, thus reuniting himself with Alicia. However, the pills kill Benigno. Ironically Alicia wakes up during or sometime after childbirth. The baby is stillborn, and Alicia begins rehabilitation to recover her walking ability. The film ends with Marco, sitting two rows in front of Alicia, turning around and smiling at her for a moment, and then turning back around.

The play "Trenches", by Alicia's dance teacher, mirrors the events that unfold in the movie. In the play, whenever a soldier dies, a ballerina rises from the body. In the movie, when Benigno dies, Alicia (a ballerina herself) is reborn and rises.

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Cast and roles



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Talk to Her" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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