ABSTRACT
But, first of all, what is the virtue that is supposed to be in question here? Almodóvar, in an interview with A.O. Scott, warned him: “It’s a bit of a contradiction that a movie that talks about words, communication, human voices is a movie that’s difficult to talk about without betraying it,”3 and the difficulty Almodóvar invokes is real. The virtue of “talking to” someone seems to be the virtue of establishing or trying to establish some fundamental mode of communication between the person who does the talking and the person to whom the talking is addressed. And yet, it is hard to imagine what sort of genuine and valuable “communication” is supposed to be even potentially achievable, especially in the situations that Almodóvar portrays in the film. As we will discuss later, much of the verbal “talking” in Talk to Her is represented as acutely problematic, a source of distortion, misunderstanding, and outright manipulation. Benigno seems to be an exception here. One may well have the impression that Benigno’s talking to Alicia is offered as a paradigm of a loving and uncorrupted attempt to convey something absolutely vital to his patient. Perhaps this is so, but after all, Alicia is completely without consciousness, and the prima facie absurdity of Benigno’s constant talking to her lies in the fact that communication with her in any familiar sense is apparently out of the question. If the virtue of “talking to her” lies in the achievement or even in just the goal of conveying something to the woman he loves, then it is hard to grasp what it is that could be expressed or otherwise conveyed to her. Even if we assume that the something that Benigno aims to communicate is something that lies beyond his words or beyond the content of any words at all, it should be possible to specify the general character of the way he seeks to establish some significant connection with her. Or, we can put the question in a different fashion. At the conclusion of the movie,
Marco has come to learn?4
