Very Gay Film/Very Straight Guy: "Bad Education"

For pride month, straight critic Ben Miller takes a look back at a gay film he otherwise would have never seen.

Much of the experience of taking in film is seeing yourself in the characters and situations. Part of why I wanted to write this series is for something exactly like this. Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education is completely foreign to me (no pun intended for the Spanish language). Every male character is either gay, transgender, or sexually fluid. If you are none of those things, how do you connect?

This is where empathy enters the picture. It's the characteristic straight people have historically had the most trouble with. This is why you have the successes of Fox News and conservative podcasters. When you have no perception of other perspectives, you tend to stay inside the same bubble that reinforces your own belief systems. But us straights have a grand opportunity. If we let other viewpoints and experiences into our self-contained bubbles, the world will expand for the better.

Almodovar is the king of empathy, whether earned or otherwise. The veteran filmmaker isn't interested in expressing his opinion on how people behave, but rather attempts to elicit an otherwise unthinkable level of understanding. Almodovar has no intention of normalizing, fetishizing, or excusing child sexual abuse by a member of the clergy, but how do you feel as the audience when it seems like the clergyman was genuinely in love? That's a incredibly difficult idea to get behind, or even introduce. Almodovar presents it with such exactitude, it rolls right off your back. There is no legislation of the idea, because everything presented is so abstract in its truth.

And that's this film's magic. In a film filled with flashbacks, flashforwards, and dramatic recreations of events, nothing is ever truly understood as truth. You might have a general understanding, but so many characters lie and deceive for their own self-interests, the viewer can never truly grasp if what we're being told is true. That presentation never gives you a firm footing and allows you to ignore plot holes or character inconsistencies. That's a really cool place for a film to get to.

Plot-wise, the film follows film director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) as he searches for his next project. Actor Angel Andrade (Gael Garcia Bernal) shows up at Enrique's office claiming to be his boarding school friend and first love Ignacio. Angel is looking for work and brings a story describing their time at school, as well as a fictional reunion as adults.

The film flashes back to the late 70s where Ignacio is now drag queen Zahara (also Bernal), who reunites with Enrique and confronts Father Manolo (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), who abused him as a child. Additional flashbacks document Ignacio and Enrique's burgeoning love as children and Father Manolo's manipulation of the relationship. All the while, Enrique deals with the film production, his memories of Ignacio, and his own desire for Angel, who may not be who he seems.

In today's day and age, misinformation is rampant, whether intentional or otherwise. Objective truth is oftentimes unknowable. The characters in Bad Education often delude themselves into presenting a truth that works for them, place themselves into a past where they never were, or usurp stories for their own benefits. While this might seem confusing, Almodovar delivers everything with such flair and noir influences that it's more entertaining to just be along for the ride. Even the discovery of the truth at the end of the film comes with little more than an epilogue. Knowing the truth doesn't make what you just watched any less interesting.

That's the connection. That's the empathy. We have all convinced ourselves of a lie that is self-beneficial. There is resonance in wanting to make yourself more important or hide the seedier things in your life. I might not be able to relate to any of these character's sexual proclivities, but I certainly have misrepresented myself to impress someone or to make myself look good. Connection doesn't have to be positive, but it can still be there.

When it comes to explicit content, the film made waves back in 2004 when it was rated NC-17. By today's standards, it's pretty blasé. There are only two scenes of any sort of sex, and there isn't anything overly explicit happening. If this film was depicting a straight sexual relationship, would this have gotten such a rating? No way. There are a few other scenes of leering eyes on near-naked bodies, but that's par for the course for an Almodovar film. The sex is a byproduct, not the mechanism for plot.

Each actor brings the goods, especially Bernal. Almodovar's male actors have had a long history of playing gay, but Bernal never shies away from what the filmmaker asks of him. He is fully committed to each role, whether it's the reserved Angel, or the loud and proud Zahara. The actor slips back and forth between personas like a glove. Martinez has to remain mostly insular, but his steady hand drives the film's morality, even when his character gets a little morally gray.

Pedro Almodovar is a filmmaker like few others. Not only is he one of the great auteurs of the last 40 years, he should be the natural introduction for the straight world into gay cinema. Bad Education is just another example of a master at work.

Next Week: Female sexuality is explored with gentle grace in Princess Cyd

Previous episode: Stranger by the Lake

Comments

[Paranoid Android]

Straight viewer here. Haven't seen it since the theater, but I do remember there was one sex scene that, how should I put this, I had never seen onscreen before. Now it was brief and hardly central to the plot, but I imagine without that one scene this would've been rated R.

More broadly I remember liking the noir vibe of this one but felt a little meh towards the contrived plot. Since then, Almodovar really hit a better groove with Volver, Parallel Mothers, and Pain & Glory... excellent films, all.