BAD EDUCATION (LA MALA EDUCACION) Galas

Celebrated Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar returns with the searing BAD EDUCATION. At first, a revealing account of two friends and their childhood experiences in a boarding school during the 1960s, the film soon reveals complex narrative layers populated by characters straddling fact and fiction, fantasy and reality.

Ignacio and Enrique are fast friends at a strict Salisian Catholic school, then are reunited years later in Madrid of the 1980s. Enrique, now 27, is a successful filmmaker searching the newspaper tabloids for the subject of his next film, when his old school friend Ignacio walks into his office, carrying with him the manuscript for a short story, The Visit, inspired by their experiences in boarding school. The story goes on to suppose that the three of them meet again as adults, with different identities. After reading The Visit, Enrique decides this will be his film.

Using humor sparingly but effectively to create an essential work of tremendous tragedy and consequence, BAD EDUCATION sees Almodovar at his most assured. Almodovar fans will still delight in the crisp dialogue and sumptuous saturation of color in every scene, and will notice with appreciation the director’s great affection for the cinema that influenced him in the post-Franco Spain, in which he and his latest masterpiece are firmly rooted.