IFFK – Day 3 – Afternoon

Incredible Almodovar

Spectators in New Theatre can consider themselves wise for choosing Talk to Her to watch over Buddha Collapsed in Shame. I haven’t seen Buddha Collapsed in Shame. But I don’t see eighteen-year old Hana Makhmalbaf, the director of Buddha Collapsed in Shame, making anything half as good as this film by Pedro Almodovar. It will take years, if ever, she would make such a film. If Almodovar impressed the audience yesterday with All About My Mother, today he stunned or mesmerized ( or better, created an un-describable feeling in) the audience with Talk to Her. It is a film that cannot be fit into a single label, a sure sign of a great movie. It can be a heart-drenching love story, a sensitive portrayal of a strange incident or an artistic depiction of a few modern-day lives. A skeleton summary of the film can be given like this: A lonely man, who is a nurse by profession, fell in love with a beautiful dancer. Soon she met with an accident and was confined to coma. Our man nurses her for four years, still keeping his tender love intact. One day she became pregnant. He was charged with raping her and arrested. After giving birth to a dead baby, she miraculously came out of coma. I don’t want to spoil climax of the movie, with this clumsy synopsis.

In an unforgettable allegoric sequence, the hero sees a movie titled Shrinking Love. In that film, the protagonist drink the new medicine invented by his lover which for reducing the body weight. After drinking the medicine, the hero goes on shrinking. In a hilarious ending, the heroine carries the hero in a small chest case. Then the hero actually goes inside the vagina of the heroine and stays there forever!

Many dignitaries were present to watch the movie, including Adoor Gopalakrishnan. The delegates have found a novel use for the festival bags. In a disturbing trend, some delegates are booking the seats for their friends in advance by placing the festival bag on the chair. The blasphemy (nothing less) is that the reserved seats will remain vacant because the persons who were supposed to come will not turn up. This happens when people are sitting on floor. Anyway, hope better sense will prevail soon.

Now I am going to have lunch and then race to Dhanya theatre to watch Getting Home. I heard it is the story of a man carrying his friend’s dead body to the dead man’s house in the other end of China. The storyline appears interesting.