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Passion effectively consumes the film and the characters from the inside. Souls reveal their blackness and as the most ambitious and personal film by the Spanish director progresses. To tell this "oeuvre noir", paradoxically sensual and variegated, holds a challenge as both the narrative and filmic structures prove to be complex. Based on a subtle play of mirrors, the film gives vertigo because of its many mises-en-abîmes and the explosion of its temporalities, skillfully orchestrated. Two young boys, Enrique and Ignacio, undergo the painful experiment of love in a pro-Franco religious institution right in the middle of the Sixties. Ignacio is harassed by Father Manolo, who dedicates a devouring and exclusive passion to him. The years pass. Enrique has become a director. During a breakdown of inspiration, he cuts out newspaper articles, finding a subject which brings to him, in an unexpected way, his former companion Ignacio. But what is the true identity of this noxious messenger of diabolic beauty? The film functions like a double account of apprenticeship, both of watching (the children make their education at the movies) and of sexuality. Almodovar equally borrows from film noir, from which he diverts the motives to reach a true power of visual figuration. The ontological duplicity that characterizes the characters is reminiscent of the heroes of film noir. The beautiful visitor (Gael Garcia Bernal), the spiritual son of Barbara Stanwyck, has all the qualities of a femme fatale. Cold, calculating, immoral, for him sex represents a means to achieve the ends. This disconcerting impostor is called Angel, another reference to film noir (Angel Face by Otto Preminger). Angel or demon? The mystery which surrounds him has an erotic influence on his entourage. As for the couple of criminal lovers that he forms with Mr. Berenguer, it evokes that of Death of a Salesman by Billy Wilder. Bad Education oscillates between various polarities: man/woman, good/bad. The characters are not double, but triple, multiplied ad infinitum. The scene where Ignacio the child breaks his head open proves to be the determining factor. A thin trickle of blood runs on his face: the splitting in half. This split contaminates the film (the screen tears), while closely combining the existence of the characters. Almodovar excels in the mixture of genres. Under the proclamation of homage to film noir points an autobiography. Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez), Pedro Almodovar's alter ego, sees his artistic course joining that of the director in numerous places. In addition, Almodovar resorts to self-quotes. The visit at the church echoes the one in The Law of the Desire (1988) with Carmen Maura... Bad Education, a scathing attack at the crossroads of the filmmaker's entire oeuvre, palpitates with an ardent beauty. This film reaffirms, in a vibrating way, an inexhaustible desire for cinema, all contained in the last sentence of the film: "and he continued to make films with passion".
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