Talk to Her

It stars: Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, and Rosário Flores.

The film was a widespread critical and commercial success, with singled-out praise towards its direction, performances and especially its screenplay.

At a performance of Café Müller, a dance-theatre piece by Pina Bausch, Benigno Martín and Marco Zuluaga are seated next to each other.

Marco is a journalist and travel writer who sees a TV interview with Lydia González, a famous matador.

The news that she has broken up with her boyfriend "el Niño de Valencia", another matador, has been all over the tabloids.

Benigno is obsessed with Alicia Roncero, a beautiful dancer whom he watches practicing in the studio that he can see into from the apartment where he lives with his invalid mother.

As a ruse to gain access to Alicia's apartment, Benigno makes an appointment to see the doctor, where he talks about the years he cared for his mother and says that he is lonely and a virgin.

In response to Dr. Roncero's questioning, Benigno says that he is gay, presumably so that the doctor will not be suspicious of his intimate care of Alicia.

The film ends in the theatre where it began, with Alicia and Katrina sitting a few rows behind Marco at the dance performance.

[5] A scene shows the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso singing "Cucurrucucú paloma" (in Spanish) at a party.

[8] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four out of four, and wrote: "Combines improbable melodrama (gored bullfighters, comatose ballerinas) with subtly kinky bedside vigils and sensational denouements, and yet at the end, we are undeniably touched.

[10] Talk to Her was not submitted as Spain's pick for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.