The movie starts with a woman who is going into labor and is desperately seeking a ride to the hospital. She never makes it and has the baby on a bus en route to the hospital. The film skips 20 years later when her son, Victor, is seeking out a young woman who he met the previous week. The woman, Elena, is too busy to see him but he refuses to believe her and eventually gets into her apartment. There is a confrontation and he knocks her unconscious while defending himself. A neighbor calls the police and two men in the vicinity respond. One of the cops is a drunk because his wife is cheating on him and the other cop is the man who his partner’s wife is having an affair with. There is a standoff and misunderstanding, Victor attempts t

Pedro Almodovar varies from the normal Hollywood narrative style in that there is no clear protagonist or antagonist. The beginning starts out with David as the protagonist and Victor as the antagonist but it doesn’t stay that way throughout the movie. We see David at first as a hero of sorts, the star on his wheelchair basketball team in the Special Olympics, a cop who was paralyzed in the line of duty and a man who has his own charity house set up for underprivileged children. Victor on the other hand just got out of prison for shooting and paralyzing David, is sleeping with Sancho’s wife Clara and follows Elena around. Soon both of these roles are lost. We find out David uses drugs and his temper plays a role on and off the court, while Victor works two jobs to save up money, reads the bible and tells Clara that they shouldn’t see each other. By the end of the movie there is no clear protagonist or antagonist.

Pedro Almodovar rarely uses any long or loosely framed shot in which there is dialogue to prevent overloading the viewer. Almodovar does a wonderful job with shot choices to keep language only a minor obstacle. The important shots of the film are all tightly framed and are no longer than medium shots so the viewer can read the subtitles and view all the action on the screen. This is well illustrated by the scene when Victor gets the job at Elena’s work and she confronts him. To make the subtitles as little of an obstacle as possible Almodovar starts with a medium shot

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