The unforgettable "Talk to Her" at Stavros Tornes and Danaos

The much-loved Fundamentals of Cinema: New Classics strand, dedicated this year to contemporary works that reshaped the cinematic landscape at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, concludes its screenings with one of the most emblematic titles of European cinema of the 00s.

Audiences are invited back into the darkened theatre for Pedro Almodóvar’s unforgettable and multi-award-winning Talk to Her (2002), screening first on Wednesday, April 22 (20:30) at the Stavros Tornes theatre, before continuing a few days later, on Tuesday, April 28 (20:00), at Danaos cinema in Athens.

A turning point in the filmography of the director who brought contemporary Spanish cinema to international prominence, Talk to Her marked a deliberate shift for Pedro Almodóvar towards a more restrained register and a more inward-looking gaze, without ever abandoning the defining traits of his early work. From camp eruptions and pulsating colour to the distorting mirrors of identity and a plunge into the unresolved enigma of sexuality, Talk to Her carries the qualities that established Almodóvar on the international stage, while at the same time venturing into bold, previously uncharted territory.

This time, Almodóvar draws everything inward, easing back the expressive register. The lowered decibel level, the restrained editing, and a sequence of tender close-ups gradually absorb his references and influences into a filmic body that feels (more) stripped down, unadorned, yet marked by fracture and compassion. Within a precisely woven narrative, where flashbacks seem to anticipate what follows and shape the present rather than revisit the past, each setting becomes a space of quiet ritual (hospital, theatre stage, bullring), reimagined as a site of confession, reverie, fantasy, and shared silence. At the same time, he moves deeper into the inner landscape of the female psyche, carried by two men at opposite ends, drawn together by a shared fate, a love that remains, in every sense, beyond reach.

Indeed, at a moment of peak creative clarity, he turns to cinema itself as a means of forgiveness and understanding in the face of human passions and errors, extending tenderness even to the most disturbing acts. An interjected black-and-white short film, one that could well have been directed by Jean Cocteau, draws us into the realm of erotic madness and obsession, a labyrinth destined to remain forever uncharted. Nearly twenty-five years after its release, Talk to Her remains a luminous modernist work, bringing together eccentricity and restraint with effortless balance.

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