Saturday, 14 July 2018

Some notes from a viewing of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (1997)

Some notes from a viewing of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (Carne trémula) (1997)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


14 July

Some notes from a viewing, on DVD, of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (Carne trémula) (1997)



They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow :
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense




Christmas Eve 1970 (Franco's Spain / excuses for repression)
Victor - Bus - Centro


A cast that is a close-knit quintet - in adapting Ruth Rendell, Pedro Almodóvar gives us the sort of love-circle of a play by Jean Racine, which (Samuel) Beckettt gently parodied at the start of Murphy, or we may know from (Arthur) Schnitzler and La Ronde... :

David ~ Javier Bardem
Elena ~ Francesca Neri
Victor ~ Liberto Rabal
Clara ~ Ángela Molina
Sancho ~ José Sancho


'We are two tear-drops
In a song'


Like a musical
Or an old film



David - re-enacting Rear Window (1954), with an immensely more mobile version of James Stewart (as L. B. 'Jeff' Jefferies)

Sancho - married 12yrs - hits wife
Victor - in reading the Book of Genesis, sees Moses referring to him

Bienvenido mat


'You need me more than he does'

'Yes, you're offensively honest'

'I'll keep exploiting your guilt complex'


Ends in 1996 - stopped being shitless




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

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