From "Il Manifesto" of September 28, 2004 by CRISTINA PICCINO
Autobiography with a noir heart
Pedro Almodovar presents his latest film, "Bad Education," on Italian screens on October 8th. A foray into the extreme game of seduction between children, priests, and transgender adults.
Gael Garcia Bernal in the film
ROME – Bad Education, Pedro Almodovar is keen to point out, is not an autobiographical film. He had already explained this at the last Cannes Film Festival, and he reiterated it yesterday in Rome, in the designer rooms of the Es Hotel, where he arrived for the Italian launch – it comes out October 8th. However, there are many images that hark back to his childhood as a boy growing up in a priestly boarding school, and then to his twenties, bursting with the movida in the free Spain of the 1980s. One of the characters, Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez), is a young and already famous director who, like Almodovar himself, seeks inspiration for his stories in the most bizarre newspaper reports. But it's not "real," just as the character of the priest who, in the guise of Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez-Cacho), seduces Ignacio, the sexiest boy in the school, separating him out of jealousy from his friend, Enrique, only to suffer a terrible punishment years later, having already abandoned the habit and become Mr. Berenguer (Lluis Homar). The angel of vengeance is called Angel (Gael García Bernal), Ignacio's younger brother in drag, now a drug addict and sick... In short, there's a mix of truth (or its staging) that lies in suggestions, in personal memories or those collected from others, in lifelong encounters, given that this film is a long-standing obsession. And of imagery, the declared passion for cinema, the darkened theater in which the two boys experience sex and their first caresses. Who writes and multiplies the characters, the director, his actor, his ghosts, Angel, Ignacio, brothers who merge until they become one another in the lines of the story written by one, stolen by the other... Both merge in Zahara, that is, Ignacio in his dream of being a woman, but also the jealousy of his less intelligent and less sensitive brother. A painful kaleidoscope as only passion can be, extremist like a gesture of death in the excess of love punctuated by Cuore matto, Almodovar's truly "autobiographical" passion for Italian songs from the '60s and '70s.
The genre he uses to define «La mala educaciòn» is noir.
Because it isn't, and isn't intended to be, a Manichean film. There's no clear division between the characters, the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other. They're all ambitious, unscrupulous; rather than good and bad, we could say bad and very bad. However, there are aspects of them that I like; the fact that they chose to live freely, without complaining, the darkest side of themselves, is already a positive thing for me. They're capable of going all the way. Bad Education isn't even a film about good and evil. The word "education" in Spain refers to a person's characteristics, their way of being, or their academic training. For me, it's above all the religious education my generation and those before them received. In the priests' schools, the academic aspect was very poor; the teachers were unprepared, except for the mathematics department, where they were forced to hire people who knew the subject. If education was supposed to involve spiritual formation, I'd call it the opposite, a profound distortion. Although the negative judgment in the film isn't limited to the priests. There are other characters who aren't part of the religious universe and who aren't any better. Overall, however, this isn't a romantic comedy. It's a noir, and noir highlights the worst sides of humankind, something that's always fascinated me.
You took a very open stand against Aznar immediately after the Madrid attacks. What is your impression of Zapatero's Spain today? We've seen that there will be a family reform that favors gay couples and that there has been a proposal to abolish the Church's tax privileges.
I think Spanish civil society is much more advanced than cinema and politicians. Take television. Not that I watch it; in fact, there are things like Big Brother that I hate. Yet it's interesting that the new series features a female transsexual, a woman who has become a man. Like other television series, it's full of homosexual or transvestite characters. For the first time, we're seeing programs that address the emotional problems of straight and gay couples in the same tone. I'm not saying that television offers refined analyses or educational projects, but it's important for the public to become accustomed to these realities. I believe that politicians' choices reflect a process that has already been undertaken at certain social levels, but which is still in its infancy and therefore needs to be validated.
Let's return to the darker sides. Autobiography and cinema merge, there's the memory of noir and its films, think of "Law of Desire.".
In some ways, this film's roots lie there. It's not autobiographical; there's something more, especially because I wasn't interested in finding a character who could impart a moral lesson. As I said, I like exploring the dark side of the human heart. My memories of boarding school were the initial inspiration, but what I wanted was a film about cruel, unscrupulous characters, the worse they were, the more they interested me. That's why it's impossible to talk about reality; we're not dealing with everyday morality; the violence that governs relationships in Bad Education lives in cinema. It's as if I were looking for reality in Kill Bill. If judged realistically, it would be atrocious; violence transferred to the imagination takes on a different meaning. That's why, if the priest is a villain, I didn't want the child next to him to be the innocent. I preferred to tell it through the words of his character, now an adult, who sees himself consciously, who knows his destiny as a transsexual and a transvestite, something impossible to imagine at ten years old. This is not to say that all children who have been sexually approached by priests become transgender.
The figure of «Mala educaciòn» is the male love triangle.
It was almost obligatory; the characters' universe is a boarding school where there are no women. Furthermore, I didn't want to portray all of Spain, the reality outside the boarding school... The only female figure is the mother of the two brothers, who is good, positive, and unprejudiced. Three remains the founding number throughout the film. The two boys and the priest, the brothers and the double: in this, the director's character functions like a detective, wanting to find out what happened to his old friend. Am I? No, if only because I'm not in the habit of sleeping with the people I work with. As for the male side, my next film will instead focus on three female figures who believe in the supernatural in everyday life. I'll shoot it in a small town; the inspiration comes from my sisters, my mother, and grandmothers who believed in these things.
From "Corriere della Sera" of September 28, 2004 by Valerio Cappelli
«"After the Priests, a Film About Ghosts"»
Almodóvar in Rome for the Italian launch of «La mala educación» …the positive character is a tender mother (the only slight female presence) who accepts her son for what he is
Pedro Almodóvar
ROME – Missing from Bad Education, out October 8th, women will get their revenge in Pedro Almodóvar's next film: "Three generations of women to talk about paranormal phenomena. Where I was born, people believe a lot in the resurgence of the dead and in ghosts." The Spanish Parliament is about to approve a law recognizing gay marriage. "Could my films have influenced this decision? Maybe," replies the celebrated director. He says society is better than the political class and even than cinema. "I'm not a TV watcher; it's almost all trash. I abhor Big Brother, but in the latest Spanish edition, there's a transgender person, a woman who became a man, treated like everyone else, and so in trashy programs about gay cuckoldry, they're spoken of in the same way as heterosexuals. This has contributed to a more tolerant view of reality.".
Lovers filming each other with a camera, burning with desire, their gazes fixed on forbidden zones. Presented at the Cannes Film Festival, Pedro Almodóvar's most risqué film is about to arrive. The protagonists of Bad Education are Fele Martinez and Gael García Bernal (who played the young Che in The Motorcycle Diaries), and both recall the vibrant tension on set, the perfectionism, and at the same time Almodóvar's simplicity. In telling the story of a pedophile priest and two kids caught in their first love—one will become a director and the other transgender—the Spanish director recalled his time at the Salesian boarding school. Almódóvar chose to tell a film within a film, reciting hypocrisies, the sense of sin, and punishments like a reversed rosary. "But it's not exactly an autobiographical work, even if memories have played their part. No priest has ever abused me." To save his feelings, he is forced to sell himself to the priest: "I'm not looking for moral lessons, this isn't a settling of scores with the clergy. If I needed revenge, I wouldn't have waited so long. The church doesn't interest me, not even as an antagonist. Be careful how you judge; the violence of cinema is different from that of real life, otherwise Tarantino and Peckimpah before him would have gone to prison.".
In the ups and downs of a melodrama built on symmetries, on a volcano fringed by avenging angels, the protagonist's identity will be revealed by cinematic fiction, through the film the director is making. "Cinema was my true education; it was on the same street as my boarding school. No, that director isn't me," Almodóvar smiles, "also because I don't take his risks; I don't sleep with the people I work with." There's the education in good manners and there's the academic education, "which in my case was religious, terrible. The teachers weren't qualified at all; rather than forming the spirit, they focused on deforming the spirit of us children.".
It's a noir that spans three eras (1964, 1977, 1980), in a hall of mirrors that constantly holds surprises, where the positive character is a tender mother (the only slender female presence) who accepts her son for who he is, "all the others are bad or worse than bad, but maybe not even that, because they decide their lives freely, and choose the darkest options. They are characters condemned to a fatal destiny, aware of what they face. It's not a comforting film, not one of those from which you emerge happy, as the Americans say; I wanted to delve into the darkness of the human heart.".
From "L'Unità" dated 09.28.04 by Gabriella Gallozzi
Almodóvar: Priests? Cinema is better.
The director is in Rome to present "La mala educacion," a coming-of-age story and noir.
A scene from 'La Mala Educacio'’
ROME: "Catholic education is terrible, both academically and spiritually. Indeed, the spiritual formation entrusted to priests is actually a spiritual deformation." This, in short, is the title of Pedro Almodóvar's new film, "Bad Education," which will be released in Italian theaters on October 8th, distributed by Warner Bros. The Spanish director himself explained this during a press conference attended by a crowd of distinguished guests. Wearing a brown leather jacket and a mop of hair blown white by the wind, Pedro now has the reassuring air of a middle-aged man, far removed from the irreverent and "scandalous" tone of the past, despite the visceral anticlericalism he harbored during his boarding school years, just like the film's two young protagonists. With two Oscars (All About My Mother and Talk to Her) and countless other awards (César, EFA, Golden Globes), as well as the unanimous praise of global critics, Almodóvar no longer needs the "pull" of "scandals," even if his latest film, Bad Education, has been "media-packaged" in this direction, as a film exposing pedophile priests. He himself writes as much in the press book: "This film is not a settling of scores with the priests who badly educated me, nor with the clergy in general. If I needed revenge, I wouldn't have waited forty years to do so. The Church doesn't interest me, not even as an antagonist." And he reiterates it verbally: "The true protagonist of the film is cinema. Cinema as an alternative education, in this case, to that of priests. Just as it was for me as a child, with the cinema right across the street from my boarding school. That's where I truly grew up." And it is cinema, in fact, that one of the two young protagonists pursues, determined to recount in a film his long-standing passion for his college friend, himself the victim of the troublesome love of their priest teacher. But as Almodóvar reiterates, this is only the starting point, since the story unfolds against a twenty-year timeframe, from the "chastened" Sixties to the resounding Eighties of the Movida, touching on all the themes that have always been dear to the director: homosexuality, transvestism, amour fou. And crime. A proper noir, in short, "in which I was able to show the worst aspects of the human being," continues Almodóvar. "It's a genre I love very much for this very reason. Because it has its own codified morality that is very different from normal life. In noir, there are no good and bad guys, but rather the desperate and the worst of them. Besides, if we wanted to make it coincide with reality, we would have to send people like Quentin Tarantino or Sam Peckinpah to prison as soon as possible".
A genre, noir, that the director says he "stumbled upon by chance," writing this screenplay that "had been brewing for more than ten years." "When I start a film," the director concludes, "I never know if it will be a comedy or a tragedy. I don't think my cinema has influenced Spain's more tolerant attitude toward homosexuals and transvestites today. In this sense, television does more, even if it's trashy. In any case, I have a feeling there will be a lot of laughter with my next story, Volver, an all-female comedy about the Spanish obsession with believing in ghosts and the returning dead.".
From "La Repubblica" of September 28, 2004 by Maria Pia Fusco
""I tell the dark side that is within us""
"La mala educación," the Spanish film about the flaws of religious education and the hidden side of existence, will be released in Italy on October 8th. It's the story of a love triangle. The priest exerts his power over the two children, who in the meantime discover life, friendship, solidarity, sexuality, and love.
Bad Education
ROME – In Spain, Bad Education grossed over six million euros, and in Italy it opens on October 8th with 180 copies. Thirty years of cinema, and Pedro Almodóvar remains a symbol of Spain, both yesterday and today, a Spain that "after the tragedy of March 11th and the change of government, has regained political momentum among young people," a country that, from new divorce laws to gay rights, is experiencing major social changes. "I wish I could say that my cinema has contributed to some change. In reality, Spanish society is more advanced than the political class and cinema. Lately, TV programs that chronicle love and betrayal among guests have included gay couples, transsexuals, and transvestites. I hate TV, I abhor Big Brother, but the latest edition featured a homosexual. I don't think TV does this as an educational function, but rather it is forced to reflect today's Spanish society," says Almodóvar.
Bad Education: Can you explain the title better?
«In Spain, the word educación means good manners and academic training. I'm talking about the religious education that I and the two or three following generations received in boarding school from all the teachers, all priests, except for the math teacher. A terrible education, based on guilt and punishment—not education, but a deformation of the spirit for us children. But the film's theme isn't just this, it's not just about Father Manolo's abuse; other adults are no better than him.
A summary of the film?
«The story of a love triangle, Father Manolo and two children, Ignacio and Enrique. The priest exerts his power over the two boys, who meanwhile discover life, friendship, solidarity, sexuality, and love. And I love that a ten-year-old boy, out of love for another child, opposes the priest's bullying. Three is a key number: after twenty years, Father Manolo has been defrocked and is a publisher, Ignacio writes, and Enrique is a director; there are three versions of the truth, each telling their own. And the love triangle repeats itself, not with Ignacio but with his brother Juan.
Are there no positive characters?
«The film is very close to noir, and the characters belong to the genre, which explores the dark side of existence. There's no Manichean morality, there are no good guys: there are bad guys and worse guys, but these are people who freely decide their own destiny, and there's no condemnation either. Cinema can afford to talk about the worst in human beings; noir has its own morality, which isn't that of real life. Even the violence cinema indulges in is different from real life; in real life, it would be unacceptable, otherwise Sam Peckinpah or Tarantino, with all those murders in their films, should rot in jail.
There is a film within the film, the one with which Enrique tells his truth: what is the role of cinema in La mala educación?
«"He's a great protagonist; cinema was my alternative education. There was a theater on the same street as the college, and films educated me much more than priests.".
How much of the film is autobiographical?
«I wasn't a direct victim of sexual abuse; I managed to escape the priests, but there was daily abuse at school. Enrique is a director, but he's not me. I don't have his courage, I wouldn't have taken his risks, and I don't sleep with the people I work with. We just have a few things in common, like the three films we made at thirty, or the habit of reading and cutting out news stories in search of stories. Film is also an investigation, it's a search for truth; the director is a bit of a detective.
Which sequences do you consider most significant?
«The child falls while being chased by the priest, and the frame splits in two. From that moment on, his life is also split in two. His sexuality is destined to change; he will be homosexual or transgender, and there's nothing he can do to reunite his personality. Father Manolo isn't responsible; Ignacio might have become gay anyway, but Father Manolo is still guilty of the abuse. And the cruelest, most noirish sequence is when the former priest delivers the lethal dose to Ignacio, whom he had abused years before and whom he wants to free himself from in order to fully experience his passion for his younger brother, who is closer to the image of the child he loved. Ultimately, he's the character who fascinates me the most; his passion is so total that it surpasses every qualm; he's ready for anything, even losing everything he has. I identify with him, but I would never be able to take his risks; I wouldn't have the courage.
Is the last word that runs across the screen "passion"?
«"Passion is life; those who have passion survive. In this sense, the film has a happy ending.".
Is this the first time you're abandoning female characters?
«A boarding school is a male universe, and apart from the transvestite, the only woman I could include is the mother; she had to be there. They say I'm a great director of women, and I hope I qualify as a good director of men. On the other hand, I'm writing the story of three generations of women living in a small town surrounded by paranormal beliefs, ghosts, and occult mysteries. I don't believe in it, but all the women in my family have always believed in the dead returning. It will probably be my next film, and I'm happy because, as I continue writing, I realize I'm writing a comedy.