Talk to Her

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Beautiful (sometimes sublimely so), daring (sometimes outrageously so), seriously crazed and terrifically funny.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

When it's over, the realization of how much the movie means to you really sinks in; you can't get it out of your heart.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The actors are outstanding, illuminating four different views of loneliness. But it's Camara's tour-de-force performance that anchors the film, that shocks and unnerves us.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

One of Almodóvar's most challenging pictures, jumping around in time and sending a large gallery of characters through a wide variety of situations -- will find him again at the peak of his powers.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Like everything else in this superb work of art, ''Shrinking Lover'' is exquisitely Almodóvarian. It's funny, tender, a little shocking, and it pays homage to what we know about movies: that they can move us beyond words.

The New Yorker David Denby

Almodóvar has brought an extraordinary calm to the surface of his work. The imagery is smooth and beautiful, the colors are soft-hued and blended. Past and present flow together; everything seems touched with a subdued and melancholy magic. [25 November 2002, p. 108]

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Talk to Her is as melodramatic -- and, sporadically, as funny -- as any Almodóvar comedy, but its mood is one of muted, aching loneliness, while the color scheme leans less to hot reds and magentas than to rich, elegant shades of ochre.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

No one can blend melodrama and heightened emotion with laugh-out-loud wackiness the way Almodóvar does.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Like taking a drug everyone says is dynamite and impatiently wondering why the heck it's not kicking in. The kick in fact turns out to be real, and as powerful as advertised, but it doesn't necessarily hit you in any way you anticipated.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Great filmmakers push their ideas and characters to the limit, unafraid of consequences - which is what Pedro Almodovar has done in Talk To Her, his latest film and, I think, his best.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

No director since Fassbinder has been able to evoke such complex emotions with such problematic material.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Almodovar loves the human flesh -- indeed, one of his films is titled "Live Flesh" -- and with the quietly subversive Talk to Her, he utilizes it not just as mere decoration but weaves with it textured themes of powerlessness, love and obsession.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A movie of technical skill and rare depth of intellect and feeling.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The marvelous new Talk To Her has elements that wouldn't have seemed out of place in an Almodóvar film of 20 years ago

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Moments of almost unbearable beauty.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Almodovar also manages to conclude the film on a hopeful note, and one that will have many audience members wishing that he will someday return to tell more about these characters.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Isn't quite as accessible or as deeply moving as his masterpiece, "All About My Mother." It's a tad too self-consciously a work of art for that. But it's still a must-see for anyone who's halfway serious about film.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This rich, emotionally complex movie finds Almodóvar venturing into trickier, more fascinating territory, even if his themes.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It is at once warmly humanistic and boldly innovative, raising philosophical questions but not answering them.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Almodóvar has made a powerfully moving film about men who think they want to lose themselves in their women, then are startled to realize that they're the ones who have been comatose.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Pure cinematic intoxication, a wildly inventive mixture of comedy and melodrama, tastelessness and swooning elegance, bodies with the texture of fresh peaches, and angular faces Picasso would have loved.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This quiet yet jolting meditation on love, obsession, loneliness, friendship and fate has the quality to entrance you through a first viewing, and compel you to take its themes and characters home with you for further consideration.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This ode to the peculiar strength and flexibility of love, romantic and platonic, is simultaneously perverse, overwrought, deeply creepy and truly moving, a high-wire act that finds humor in the grotesque and hope in emotional malformation.

Film Threat Rich Cline

It feels strangely slight for Almodovar, but there's a richness that draws us in -- There's so much going on beneath the surface that you can hardly take it all in.

Variety Jonathan Holland

An engaging, well-crafted and imaginative meditation on solitude and communication.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is Almodovar's stab at serious drama, and the result is bizarre and affecting but also unsettling in ways that the filmmaker may not have intended.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Odd, moving, strained cinematic poetry.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Talk to Her is much better than Almodóvar's "bad" movies. But it never soars as freely as his best ones do -- it has a very trim, manicured wingspan.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie is occasionally funny, always very colorful and enjoyably overblown in the traditional Almodóvar style; and the performances -- especially Javier Cámara as the gentle, sweet-spirited Benigno -- are exquisitely tender and moving.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I do wonder why a gay director's best-known movies about straight guys, Talk to Her and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!," suggest that satisfying relationships with women are most easily achieved if they're 1) unconscious or 2) in bondage.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie's cinematography is sumptuous, in its own intimate way. But all that's glorious about this film is the flesh tones. There isn't enough flesh and blood.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The key scene -- is typical of the film's fanciful narrative approach but also its grating pretentiousness.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Talk to Her affects some people very deeply, while others, like me, find it high-grade kitsch.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Initial strangeness inexorably gives way to rote sentimentality and mystical tenderness becomes narrative expedience.