Watching any film by Pedro Almodóvar is an enriching experience, an experience that teaches the viewers some new things about cinema and some new things about life. Live Flesh (“Carne tremula” in Spanish) is not exception. It is a film about passion and desire, it is a melodrama that makes more sense than life itself, it presents five characters whom we get to know by the end of the film better than our own family.
source http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118819
The story has one prologue, one first chapter taking place twenty years later, more chapters in the contemporaneity (meaning 1997) and a prologue a few months later. A young woman (only appearance in this movie as a live person by Penélope Cruz) gives birth, it’s the sleepy Madrid at the end of the Franco era, still a policy state, still hard to catch a taxi even if the streets at night are empty, so the birth takes place in a semi-hijacked bus. Twenty years later in bustling democratic Madrid two cops are called to a place where a young 20 years old pizza delivery boy (yes, that boy) has an altercation with a beautiful young prostitute. Shots are being fired, and one of the policemen is hurt and becomes crippled, not before drawing the attention of the young woman. A few years later the boy gets out of jail and plans to revenge the policeman who stole his youth. His revenge involves not only the woman but also the wife of the other cop. We are in full Almodovar melodrama, everybody is in love or makes sex with everybody else, it’s not a romantic triangle but a love and passion pentagon. All funny and sexy, violent and endearing
(video source Vhs Archives)
The songs of Chavela Valdez inspired part of the story and the approach of Almodóvar. As in many other of his films he makes no moral judgment about the actions of his characters, but we feel that he cares about them all, and would like to make us care too. Although it’s a mix of comedy and melodrama ‘Live Flesh‘ never goes where we expect, because the director and story teller does not run away from mixing the beautiful and tend with the ugly and cruel aspects of life. Javier Bardem performs here in one of the best roles of his early career, and the rest of the team including Liberto Rabal, Francesca Neri, and Ángela Molina define each their characters, each of them with his or her own passion and aspiration to love. Although it is hazard that seems to trigger many of the events, the ending provides a fulfilling sensation. The divinity (I mean, of course, the film director) takes care of everything.