La mala educación (Bad Education)

As I rewatched this, at first I wondered if it might play out more dramatic if told chronologically, or without the framing mystery of Ignacio/Juan... so much flashing back left me a little dizzy (alternately: so much flashing back made me feel like I was watching a Spanish episode of Lost). But by the end I had to concede, the story only coheres with the framing mystery intact.

Walking out of "FILM NOIR WEEK" at the cinema after having just committed murder, Manolo/Berengeur says to Juan, "It's as if all the films were talking about us." Bad Education feels like the most neo of neo-noir stories I can think of: like all the noir tropes have been turned inside out and upside down.

Volver

I don't speak Spanish, but online translators tell me volver translates alternately as return, go back, come back, and turn around. When Raimunda is singing "Volver, volver," the subtitles tell me it means "Come back, come back." The revolving windmills outside their village is a repeating visual motif. My point is, this movie isn't being subtle with its theme of returning, of things coming back.

But boy, it's being layered with that theme, isn't it? Everybody's got secrets, everybody's lying about the present (or recent past), and everybody's distant pasts seem like inexhaustible mysteries. Never dull for a moment, with characters so... human! If Hollywood wrote women like this, I think we'd have a very different cinematic landscape.