# Carne trémula (1997)

### reviewed by
Eric Lurio

    Live Flesh

     Directed by
     Pedro Almodóvar

This is what is known as melodrama. A loves B, but B doesn't remember A because she was too stoned to remember anything. Tragedy occers when C and D come along. So years later Fate steps in and A and B get back together, therebye infuriating C and D. It has to happen, there's no two ways about it.

Pedro Almodóvar's `Live Flesh' is an exercise in inevitablility.

This is the life of Víctor Plaza(Liberto Rabal) from his birth in a bus in the dark days of Fascist Spain to the `divinely' mandated ending.

A week before the real story begins, Victor has had sex with Elena(Francesca Neri), the rich daughter of an Italian diplomat and the aforementioned junkie. Victor manages to get into her apartment because she mistakes him for her dealer. Push comes to shove, and the police, namely David(Javier Bardem) and Sancho(José Sancho) who gets into a fight with our hero, who winds up in jail for seven years in the Pokey.

David is paralyzed, and gets not only an extremely guilty Clara, but fame and fortune as a wheelchair basketball star and Paralympic gold medallist. Sancho winds up with his cheating wife Clara(Angela Molina).

So after six years in the pokey, Victor is out of jail. His mother is dead, and he visits her at the cemetary, where just at that moment, he spots....that's right!!!!

The performances are fine, but the movie isn't. The characters, except for David, are completely uninteresting. One wonders why Almodóvar even bothered.

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