# Carne trémula (1997)

### reviewed by
David N. Butterworth

    LIVE FLESH
    A film review by David N. Butterworth
    Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth

    ***1/2 (out of ****)

            "Live Flesh."  Vintage Almodóvar.

A standoff. A man holds a woman, a diplomat's daughter, hostage in his embrace, a gun pressed to her head. A cop, impaired by drink due to his wife's philandering, trains his gun on the man's nether regions, threatening to shoot. Another cop holds his gun to his partner's temple, forcing him to disarm. The scene unfolds like a foursome bidding in bridge--upping the ante, signaling tacitly, going for game. The second cop retrieves the first cop's weapon, the suspect lowers his, and the woman caught in the middle moves--in slow motion--to safety. It is then that the intoxicated officer makes his move, grabbing for the assailant's gun. The room turns upside down, a shot rings out, a cop is down. Shot in the back and paralyzed for life. The young man who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time is sent to prison for six years for a crime he didn't commit.

Storytelling has always been one of Pedro Almodóvar's greatest gifts and in "Live Flesh" he gives us a twisting, turning, compelling tale peppered with well-written, colorful characters. Characters who find themselves, more often than not, in carefully-constructed scenes like these. Characters played by actors we might not know, but who look strikingly familiar nevertheless.

Take the ruggedly handsome Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal), for instance. Before he gets out of prison he could easily be mistaken for that Almodóvar favorite, Antonio Banderas. When we first meet Elena (Francesca Neri), the woman in the middle of the nervous shakedown, she looks like Spice Girl Barbie with her frizzy shock of orange hair, but later tones down her look sufficiently to pass for Juliette Lewis. Elena's husband David (Javier Bardem) is the cop crippled in the shooting and he wears David Schwimmer's bemused expression throughout. Playing the inebriated cop and his cheating wife are José Sancho and Angela Molina--no lookalikes spring to mind, but they round out the excellent cast.

It's a credit to Almodóvar's craft that these five individuals cross paths and intertwine with such credulity. "Live Flesh" begins and ends with a live birth and the film's contradictions come almost as often as the contractions. Between the two childbearings, coincidence, irony, and a hefty dollop of sex form the key elements of this thoroughly entertaining film.

Although based on a Ruth Rendell story, "Live Flesh" is brimming with the acclaimed Spanish director's high-heeled flourishes. Women are at times alluring and repulsive, their extravagant hairdos and animal print coats providing colorful highlights to the intricately-woven drama, an eye bruised by an abusive husband here, a mouth bloodied by an impromptu delivery there. While in prison, Victor learns Bulgarian from an inmate and learns to love the Bible, quoting from Deuteronomy thereafter not unlike the way by which David and Sancho refer to themselves as "guardians of a sick flock." Victor's pre-fab inheritance is a shambles in a slum resembling Sarajevo. "Dear son, I got cancer" his mother writes to him in jail. She dies before he is released and it's at the cemetery that Victor is reacquainted with Elena--redemption, ultimately, substituting for revenge.

            Touching, funny, sexy.  Classic Almodóvar.  "Live Flesh."

    --
    David N. Butterworth
    dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu

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