La Mala Educación could easily be Almodóvar's best movie ever. Yes the movie is darker than usual, but the plot is masterfully rendered in a mind-boggling game of morbid role-reversals. The best metaphor I can find is a distorted mirror: the story is broken down in pieces, a movie into a movie, characters shifting unexpectedly in even darker areas, stealing each other's lines and turning the table over and over. Gael García Bernal is at his best, finally playing on ambiguity rather than relying on his good looks.
The soundtrack is odd, and funny, with a clever use of old songs that perfectly fit the plot ("Cuore Matto", a Spanish version of "Moon River") and an amusingly obscene version of "Torna a Sorrento", which I am afraid most will miss. Aside from the mind boggling twists of the campy "noir" plot, the real mystery is the NC-17 rating. Pretty amazing in a movie with virtually no nudity and it speaks volumes about what we are going to see-- and not see in the future.
The soundtrack is odd, and funny, with a clever use of old songs that perfectly fit the plot ("Cuore Matto", a Spanish version of "Moon River") and an amusingly obscene version of "Torna a Sorrento", which I am afraid most will miss. Aside from the mind boggling twists of the campy "noir" plot, the real mystery is the NC-17 rating. Pretty amazing in a movie with virtually no nudity and it speaks volumes about what we are going to see-- and not see in the future.