Bad Education

Spain 1980, the period of destape after the demise of Franco: Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is a young, gay, film-director struggling to find a subject for his next venture. Then an old schoolfriend, Juan (Gael Garcí Bernal), shows up with a script. Now going by the name Ángel and tiring of the Bumblebee experimental theatre group with which he has been performing for the past few years, he desperately wants Enrique to adapt the piece, with himself as the lead, a transsexual named Zahara.

In the script s/he is blackmailing a priest, Father Ignacio (Francisco Boira) by threatening to publish a story revealing the sexual abuse he perpetrated on his young charges at the church school, with an already emotionally charged situation further complicated by the fact that a youthful relationship with Juan gave Enrique his first inklings as to his own sexuality.

Enrique is captivated by the story. There is however one problem: He cannot see Ángel as Zahara. Thus the two men fall out and, as Enrique investigates his friend's more recent past – the pair not having seen each other since they were around ten years old – a sinister plot of murder and conspiracy emerges…

Bad Education, then, sees Pedro Almodovar recombine once more the two modes that have long dominated his film-making, melodrama and thriller, an unholy union of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock by way of the long-established European art cinema tradition of semi-confessional films about the cineaste/artist as a young man (Truffaut, Fellini etc etc.)

But, other than expressing a predictable if understandable distaste for the Franco regime, increasingly moribund as the 1960s shaded into the 1970s, the director plays his hand close to his chest, a series of wheels within wheels, stories within stories and films within films making it all but impossible to determine the extent to which this is fiction or Film a Clef.

What, for instance, are we to make of the mise-en-abyme sequences featuring Bernal – an excellent performance – as Zusana? Are they Angel's projections of how he sees himself performing the role or Enriques's – less likely perhaps given his initial misgivings – or something in between, the ultimate product of their collaboration? Or does the 'reality' here belong to Almodovar, the film maker behind the behind the scenes? Yet, even if Almodovar declines to show his presence directly, his characteristic style is apparent throughout from the attention-grabbing Saul Bass meets Se7en titles, full of red and ominous religious/sexual symbols, to the closing emblematic "passion", thereby further confusing and complication the relationship between himself and Enrique.

Likewise, to what does the title Bad Education / Mala Educacion refer? The appalling history of the Roman Catholic Church in covering up and/or condoning too many of its officials abuse of their power is one obvious answer, its intersection with a repressive regime another. But the former also feels too simple, especially given Almodovar's characterisation of Father Ignacio – incarnated with pathos and power by Francisco Boira – as a figure who is, in himself, clearly a victim of then-prevalent attitudes towards homosexuality, along with the far more challenging possibility that it is the very environment of the church school that, at some level, made Enrique begin to understand who he 'really' was.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that this is an accomplished, thought-provoking and, above all, emotionally mature film that sees a director who is not afraid to ask questions of his audience and, above all, himself.

The only minor fault – there has to be one, if only to encourage further excellence – is the look of Enrique and Ángel, just too carefully chosen to avoid offputting – distancing – period styles, placing them within bas relief against some of the other, punkier, characters around them.

Still, damn close to a masterpiece.