Live Flesh

Year: 1997

Duration: 01:36:35

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar

Actors: Javier Bardem, Francesca Neri, Liberto Rabal

Language: Spanish|Italian(English subtitles)

Country: France|Spain

Also known as: Carne trémula, Trembling Flesh

Description: The film Live Flesh is based on the eponymous novel by the popular British writer Ruth Rendell. The main character, Victor, because of a quarrel with his girlfriend, Elena, accidentally injures a police officer.

After 4 years in prison, he learns that the same police became famous basketball player, an idol and hero of the audience with fabulous contracts and even married on his ex-girlfriend Helen.

From director of Volver

Review: spansky director Pedro Almodovar has removed the tape when he was 48 years old. Interestingly, in his fifties was like a second birth in Mexico, the great Spaniard Luis Buñuel, who started with a sharp and nervous paintings “The Forgotten” and “He” a new phase of creativity that does not become the latest – there is still waiting for at least a remarkable period of French more subtly sarcastic works. That’s his faithful heir Almodovar, overcoming exhaustion and a kind of artistic confusion in the first half of the 90s, has created (as he himself admitted) most cruel kinobiografii own work, which, however, does not look without laughter, despite the tragedy of the situation outside .

In the “Carne trémula” defined (contrary to the accepted rules) in the opening credits simply as un film de Almodóvar, that is, without specifying the name of the director (as if enough is already known to all families, but participated in the filming of tape, as always, as a producer Agustin Almodovar, the brother of Don Pedro), is a very funny and at the same time valued quote from “The attempts of crime” Buñuel. This Mexican painting in 1955 is also found under the name of “Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz”, and in English, its title was surprisingly good shade of meaning – “Rehearsal crime” that, as if in passing, but with deadly accuracy emphasized the desire of the protagonist to the game death, in fact – to the frivolous, almost childlike flirt with her.

That’s like a film by Pedro Almodovar with intent appears under different names – Ruth Rendell novel, an English version and a mill in the U.S. (of course, and we) are rather gastronomic title “Live Flesh”, in France – some obscure title ” In the flesh and bone, “in his native Spain – so exciting at the same time and pompous-sounding phrase” a trembling flesh “(the word trémula even have some association with illegal viskontievskoy La terra trema). It is a pity that the director did not have recourse to one – is witty – the embodiments illustrated in the interview to the French magazine Première, namely: “Men on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” This would immediately refer back to the first tape, Almodovar’s famed all over the world – “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

On the other hand, it really would express a state of physical and psychological thrill that experience will sparkle with love and the death of three men – David, Victor and Sanchez, who are suffering because of the two women, Helen and Clara. For them, the whole of life in general and in particular erotic attraction – it is an eternal “rehearsal crimes” are not necessarily committed to the reality or soluble only in a morbid imagination. In any case, it is always balancing on the edge of the abyss, walking on the razor’s edge, playfully pushing an unsafe neck in a noose (for instant recall in association bunyuelevski aloof manner of crazy fun way representative of a noble family in the English kinofarse “ruling class” by Peter Medak). Or, it may be noted almodovarskie typical hints of sex and relationship of the death instinct, which scattered in most of his works – from the early “Labyrinth of Passion”, bypassing the “Matador” and “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!.

By the way, should be happy that it was after the Spanish maestro “Kika” courageous first step on the throat of his own song and took the hard-melodramatic, not even a hint of a smile implying “The Flower of My Secret,” and then again turned inside out, threw unwanted old skin as snake, and was reborn just like himself, cocky and uninhibited creator of the early 80’s, at the same time finding befitting the average age of men philosophical wisdom.

When Pedro Almodovar kept talking about his irresistible love for the great Swede Ingmar Bergman and as one of the examples of postmodern imitation frantically seeks the truth Scandinavia led the roll between the explicit pictures “High Heels” and “Autumn Sonata”, many have treated this patient with condescension. Or took a good-natured grin quirks fiery, sultry and wide-open almost naked from the south of Spain, who just could not be anything to do with painfully experiencing all deep down inside, gloomy and closed tightly inhabitant of the island in the Baltic Sea. But if we look for the unexpected analogy, “a trembling flesh”, in addition to the already mentioned Buñuel or, say, Juan José Bigas Moon (he, incidentally, borrowed actors Javier Bardem and Francesca Neri), which in 90 years has been actively exported from Spain untamed animals mania heroes because of “hams and thighs”, “golden eggs” and “tits and the moon,” must necessarily come to mind brilliant “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman, by the way, taken by him in the same 48 years.

Maybe someone provocative and sexy frame with tight bodies of the two lovers instant – Victor and Elena, moreover, a close-up of almost merged vulvas and thighs seem insulting, outrageous misbehavior paraphrase the famous, emblematic and symbolic moment of “Person” when for a brief moment, the two halves of those heroines, Elizabeth and Alma, there is some third person. It disappeared as if two persons, one of them leading to confused monologue, she tried in vain to understand and find common ground with the other, over the indifferent silence. A different point of view, aggressive Nothing like a predatory carnivorous flower (as of early fantasy comedy “Little Shop of Horrors” by Roger Corman), watch for an innocent victim, helpless soul (after all, Alma – it’s in Latin, “soul”) to absorb it without residue in his insatiable belly.

According to the remark of the Almodovar, in the heroine Francesca Neri is also possible to see vampiric pallor and typical femme fatale tendencies, which is crazy, sends to prison, makes a physical or mental disabilities of their men – David and Victor, proving the “modern Helen of Troy.” But in actual fact, the merger of two of the flesh, male and female, in the sweetest languor of repose marks the dawn, the idea still changed Pedro Almodovar, is not a moment of truth for the bullfight of love, and the true conception of a new life. This is the forerunner of the next birth – now his son Victor, and quite another to Spain, free, and no fear.

“Carne trémula” – a picture of a fun and cheerful, outrageous and just trembling, let it be heard gunshots, people lose their legs, funerals are replacing the birth, but in the end, only two rhyme birth, which allow you to take a tragicomic story of kindly terminated Christmas story. And yet, despite already anecdotal, spice and even frivolity of individual scenes and copyright-performing treatments, Spanish film director, perhaps for the first time and is philosophical wiser than ever, removing the true parable of the “mystery of the vicious conception.”

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Trembling Flesh