Posted: 01/03/2005

Bad Education

(2004)

by Ben Beard

Men on the verge of a sexual meltdown.

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar once again returns to the world of drag queens and junkies and hustlers and artists while getting down to some grand gay myth-making in this noirish twisty about victims and predators and the loss of innocence.

Enrique, a burgeoning filmmaker in a creative crisis, greets childhood friend Ignacio whom he hasn’t seen in over a decade. Ignacio brings him an autobiographical story about two young schoolboys in love and the abuse they endured from the teacher-priests they trusted. Ignacio wants to act in one of Enrique’s movies; Enrique wants to turn Ignacio’s story into a film.

The story, titled “The Visit,” follows a young hustling transvestite named Ignacio who returns to the school where he was abused to blackmail Father Manolo, the priest who abused him. His method: he’s written a story called “The Visit” about a young student named Ignacio molested by a priest named Father Manolo. If Father Manolo doesn’t pay Ignacio one million pesetas, the story will be published.

The filmmaker Enrique reads the story about the priest reading the story of the real (and invented) Ignacio’s ordeals as a youngster.

Sound confusing?

Three main narratives emerge (only to splinter later): Ignacio blackmailing the priest in the late seventies; Ignacio reuniting with Enrique in the early eighties; and Ignacio navigating the confining hegemony of Franco-era Spain’s parochial educational system in the late sixties. Any social criticism runs tangential and is swallowed by the film’s snaking structure. Almodovar instead uses the priestly abuses and the theocratic society that protects them as a platform to explore the nature of social parasites and the twin themes of loss of innocence and loss of faith.

Enrique eventually decides to make the film, starring Ignacio in the lead role, only to discover some shocking truths in the process. Truth and fiction blend further as the filming begins. And the twists in the plot uncover a sprawling sordid story of minor betrayals, as the different characters jockey for physical and mental control. Leaving the audience to continually ask: Who’s screwing whom?

The gay sexual escapades shackled Bad Education with an NC-17 rating, all the more interesting when compared to equally carnal films with graphic hetero sex (Basic Instinct, for example). The pedophilia, the young doomed lovers—anything concerning children—is handled with artistic subtlety (compared to, say, Sleepers), and it’s only adults seen cavorting beneath the sheets. (Whether the eroticism adds or detracts from the film is another matter.)

Long articles could be devoted to the structure of this labyrinthine tale, and it is impressive, but the lack of a sympathetic character makes for alienating viewing. Does the audience care what happens to Ignacio, Enrique, or Father Manolo? Does Almodovar care if the audience cares? Should we rejoice in Ignacio’s revenge, or take pity on the cavalcade of poor scheming lowlifes incapable of healing? Perhaps it’s the lack of a female character that results in this tawdry male-dominated world. Or maybe men, homosexual or otherwise, simply are cheap, petty, vindictive, and self-destructive by nature, the weaker sex. Watching Bad Education leads one to think so.

Almodovar in a self-interview (for which he should by now be quite infamous) denies that Bad Education is autobiographical, but it is difficult not to make the assumption. The familiar villains are all here: the church, the state, society. And it’s hard not to see some wishful thinking in the homosexual revenge against the abusive priest. But predictable themes aside, Almodovar has constructed an emotionally cold but structurally complex gay film noir, as obsessive love and obsessive ambition consume the different characters who all seem doomed to varying degrees of failure.

Ben Beard is a film and music critique living in Chicago.

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