lastliberal Unfortunately, Cruz is not long in this film. She is a prostitute who give birth on a bus. The story is really about her son, whom we join 20 years later.Now, hang on. Victor (Liberto Rabal), her son, is infatuated with Elena (Italian beauty Francesca Neri), but she is just a junkie who is more interested in seeing her dealer than him. They scuffle and the police (David and Sancho) come. Sancho's wife is fooling around, so he is drunk and gets into a fight with Victor and a gun goes off injuring David. David (Javier Bardem) heads off to a life of wheelchair basketball and marriage to Elena. Victor goes to jail. When he gets out, he takes up with Clara (Ángela Molina), Sancho's wife.If you are not confused yet, it gets more interesting as secrets are exposed. Pedro Almodóvar has written and directed another interesting film. It ends just as it begins, but in a dig at the repressive Franco regime, with a nod to freedom.It is a comedy, a detective story, a thriller, a drama - a bit of everything. - An Almodóvar paella for the eyes.

bob the moo Having had sex with Elena the week before, Victor returns to her flat to try and see her again. However Elena was high when it happened and has no memory of it and no interest in refreshing her memory, but when Victor refuses to leave they start to fight and Elena pulls a gun, which goes off when Victor knocks it away. The police are called and David and his bitter, drunkard partner Sancho respond. A struggle ensues after a brief standoff and while Victor and Sancho wrestle on the floor, the gun goes off and David is hit. Four years later Victor is released from prison, David is in a wheelchair and has married a clean Elena while Sancho is still trying to keep his relationship with wife Carla together. Victor's release brings these individuals back into contact and unleashes the emotions of that night again.Having just watched Volver and found it to be slightly below the standards of many of Almodóvar's other films, I decide to revisit Live Flesh. Aside from the opening cliché, this film is mostly free of his comic backdrops and the touches of absurd melodrama that often accompany some of his more exaggerated characters (this isn't a criticism so much as an observation). Here the film moves quickly from Victor's birth into the fateful event that sees him jailed and we find ourselves in a serious story that is well delivered. That the narrative is unpredictable and perhaps a tad unlikely is testimony to the realism in the characters because their emotions and motivations within this mix of guilt, hate and regret are contradictory and complex – just as they would be in real life. But yet somehow Almodóvar holds it together and makes it engaging and, amazingly, convincing. I want to talk about how he turns this story into a tale I believed in but somehow he does; perhaps because he keeps it so raw and intense throughout, infecting even the sex with the emotions that exist within each character so that even those acts are borne of so much more than desire.Almodóvar also draws impressive performances from his cast which is a great help in pulling off the intensity of the tale. Cruz will be the name everyone knows but she only has a tiny role to play. It is hard to pick one stand out performance from Bardem, Neri and Rabal because the three of them are so convincing and seem to have totally engaged with their parts despite some of the actions being hard to accept on paper. Molina and Sancho are both good but their material is on the edge of the film and they aren't given the same opportunity to explore.Overall this is an impressive film that is raw and intense to the point that it compensates for the stretches within the plot. I can see why some viewers dislike it because it does take some swallowing but it is the impassioned and convincing delivery from director and actors that makes it as engaging as it is.

esteban1747 If you intend to see such a film, I warn you that you should not miss any scene if you really want to understand its intelligently arranged plot. Sometimes I see Almodovar as a kind of Victor Hugo of cinema because he makes various complicated scenes not coherently inserted in the film that you should put in order step by step. May be in this way the excitement increases and you will be more anxious to know the end of the film. Javier Bardem (David) played the role of ex-agent and ex-basketball player who was shot in fact accidentally. The Italian actress Francesca Neri is David's wife, and young Liberto Rabal is Victor, the man supposedly spoiling the lives of others, and strong lover. Love and sex scenes of the film are intense as if they were real. The behavior of the actors and actresses in the film is convincingly human, i.e. people having their merits and shortcomings in their lives, there is no fictitious models of behavior. Almodovar, as usual, tries to reflect the reality. There are many good dramas in cinema but this one is probably one of the best.

Hermina Gwen Almodovar is a master story writer--he knows exactly what to tell the viewer and when to tell it. He understands the volatile nature of the film medium, preferring to illustrate the motives of his characters rather than simply state them. As in "Todo Sobre mi Madre" and "Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios," Almodovar uses subtler methods than others to draw attention to important details. The movie holds together like an artfully composed opus, returning to hints given earlier on and embellishing on them. In this way Almodovar will definitely mess with your mind; by the end of the movie your judgments on the characters will make a total about-face.However, the first time viewer should be warned not to take the circumstances too seriously. Almodovar's plots thrive on unlikely circumstances and chance meetings of characters. It is something more akin to the magical realism in literature, not to be taken literally.