Much acclaim is being heaped on the recently released foreign film, "Talk to Her" by Spanish director and screenwriter Pedro Almodovar.  The movie has garnered two Academy Award nominations, and more than one critic has dubbed it, "... the best picture of the year." 

On different levels, the film examines a number of life's intricacies.  Foremost among them is the nature of friendship, a subject moviegoers have seen tackled many times but rarely with such fine introspection. 

As the film unfolds, a man named Marco forms an unlikely pairing with another man, Benigno.  Marco is a somewhat successful journalist with a down-to-earth disposition.  Yet, he becomes loyal to Benigno, a nurse who routinely attempts to converse with a former ballerina who is comatose, and after over four years in this state is expected to stay that way.  She is just a shell of what she used to be, "no mind, no feelings."  Still, Benigno talks to her in the most endearing, loving fashion.  He also nurtures her limp body with great care, literally washing, massaging and touching her with a tenderness that only the greatest poets can evoke.  Insightful, like any talented journalist, Marco recognizes Benigno's refined ability to love in an especially tender, nurturing way.  This insight is quite likely the reason that Marco remains loyal to a man whom, later in the film, he accuses of being "loco" - Benigno has the qualities that Marco does not.

If he had had these qualities, Marco might not have suffered the loss of his first love, a woman who walked out on him before the movie's plot line begins.  But this loss is not the only one he suffers.  In the first half of the film Marco's new, second love is seriously injured, and she too goes into a coma passing away a couple months later.  We sense that he regrets not having had Benigno's ability to love in a tender, nurturing fashion during his first relationship because then he would have, essentially, avoided two losses.  We can almost hear him wondering, "Might she have stayed had I treated her like Marco treats the ballerina?"

In middle or junior high school, what boy does not want to be friends with the star athlete, for at least a moment?  What girl does not want to befriend the most popular girl in class?  Why do we choose the friends that we do?  Are admiration and friendship the same?  These are just some of the questions Almodovar makes us ponder.

On another of the film's many levels, "Talk to Her" uproots an entrenched stereotypical notion - the belief that men fear commitment.  Benigno's commitment borders on obsession, surpassing it at one point.  Traveling journalist Marco practically camps out at the clinic where his comatose lover is staying.  And, before his second lover's accident, Marco shows no indication of walking out on her even though she has a consuming, extremely dangerous, extremely traditionally masculine career, in which she probably makes more than him - she is a top class bullfighter.

The devotion of the two men to their women is as stout as any matador's courage.  However, today's popular culture is rife with the stereotypical belief that men inherently possess a fear of commitment, a belief that has no more basis in fact than other stereotypes.  When asked about men's fear of commitment, psychologist, author and renowned marriage and family expert, Dr. Judith Wallerstein, dismissed this notion by saying, "They simply don't want to get hurt."  And neither do women.  No one does ... just ask Marco.

Such stereotypical beliefs carry a meanspirited undercurrent, as does the myth that a man must be gay if he exhibits the tenderness of a Benigno, another subtext of the film.     During a ten-day span whose mood ranges from the leftover love of Valentine's Day to, possibly, the meanness of war, Almodovar gives us timely material for our own internal monologues.