Live Flesh (Carne trémula) (1998)

Javier Bardem, and Liberto Rabal, are easy on the eyes and make the movie worth watching. It's a mildly interesting story, somewhat predictable, and with its fair share of slow moments. And as is so often the case in Almodovar movies, the intense connection between characters is shown through melodrama...not character development. If you are a fan of Almodovar, you will enjoy this. I, apparently, am not really a fan. I don't think that I have really liked any of his movies too much.

I've only seen three other Almodovar movies and they all impressed me immensely, but Live Flesh is sort of a dud. The last thing I would call this, contrary to its Flixster page, is "restrained"; those telenovela moments that Almodovar is so good at concocting are pretty much the only thing keeping this movie alive. There are plenty of hysterical dramatic highlights, like a birth on a bus, an unhappy lover bombarding her husband with hairspray, a shootout in an apartment, and a terrifically bloody climax. The rest of the movie is inert and dramatically unchallenging, trying to bill itself as subdued, but let's call a spade a spade here. This is a prototype for Almodovar's later formula - a fusion of campy melodrama and quiet human introspection - but despite some strong ideas, this overarching story isn't strong enough to sustain said formula. It's too simple and sort of random; none of the characters seem to behave with much thought. I dunno, I'm not too coherent about this one but I really didn't care for it. Maybe it's me.