Tuesday 5 July 2011

Carne Tremula - Live Flesh

1997 by Pedro Almodovar

Quite a different kind of movie from Almodovar, from all what I have seen so far. Its brilliant.

Victor ends up in  jail, after tussle at Elena's apartment involving two copes Sancho and David. A bullet made David to go on a wheel chair permanently, but he gains the love of Elena. When Victor is back,he  follows Elena and when David tries to confront him, reveals the truth that it was Sancho who shot David. David was having an affair with Clara, Sanchos wife, back then. And here on the movie takes a different turn with both Clara and Elena falling for Victor. And that is not the end yet. 

A beautiful story, which begins during Franco's reign in Madrid, with a delivery in a bus and ends with another possible delivery in the Madrid street in the 90's. In between it is a beautiful story involving 5 characters, a young man who was wrongly sentenced to jail, and two couples. Only one man, Sancho isnt cheating his wife, but he is very macho with her. But Clara has gone for David and is now after Victor. David carried the secret that he was the reason why Victor ended in jail for long from Elena. And Elena lets Victor have a day of revenge by having sex with him whole night and promptly letting David know about that. David then plans another revenge, by informing Sancho about the new affair of his wife and leads to an exciting end to the whole story of infidelity. Many scenes are quite brilliant, especially how both Elena and Sancho was exposed to the photographs at the same time and the final shoot out at Victors place, between Clara and Sancho. Above all, the beginning of the movie was stunningly brilliant.

Penelope appears only for a short period as the mother giving birth to Victor, but I would say she ends up as the best actress, still. Javier Bardem,one of my favourite actor, as David has quite a different role, with a negative shade at the back, but he was brilliant. It might not appear clear, but I am sure he had taken great pains for this role, especially his sport scenes on the wheel chair.

Almodovar is a maestro with human situations. He has made this movie almost like a thriller cum revenge movie, cum drama cum black comedy and what not. And for sure he has some clear fascination for womanhood and feminity. Inspite of all what happens, his men has lot of respect for their women. Also, it is quite wonderful, how he treated the delivery scene and also the passion of the two men, Victor and David, for the female body. The sexual scenes are not explicit, but the passion is felt and is subtly exotic. That one shot of Victor and Clara, which is the major poster shot of Carne Tremula was simply brilliant.