Carne trémula
Encyclopedia
Live Flesh is a 1997 Spanish romantic
drama
thriller film, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
, starring Liberto Rabal, Javier Bardem
, and Francesca Neri
. The film is loosely based on Ruth Rendell
's book Live Flesh
.
, Christmas 1970: As the nation is held under a state of emergency
ordered by the Franco regime
, a young prostitute Isabel Plaza Caballero (Penelope Cruz
) gives birth in a bus to a son she names Victor. Twenty years later, Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal) shows up for a date he made with Elena (Francesca Neri
), a junkie with whom he had sex a week earlier. Waiting for her dealer to arrive, Elena is not interested in seeing Victor and tells him to leave. Finally she gets a gun and orders him to leave. Enraged, Victor wrestles the gun from her, and in the process Elena gets knocked out, and the gun goes off.
A neighbor hears the shot and calls the police, and two cops respond to the report. The older cop, Sancho (Jose Sancho
), is an unstable alcoholic
who suspects his wife Clara (Angela Molina
) of infidelity
. The younger cop, David (Javier Bardem
), is more clean-cut, sober, and prefers to do things by the book. Through the window they catch sight of Victor physically struggling with Elena, and Sancho is ready to storm in, while David wants to call for a back-up. When they enter, Victor holds Elena hostage with her gun. David tries to calm him down and get him to drop his gun, but Sancho sabotages his efforts by continually threatening Victor. Finally, David puts his gun to Sancho's head, gets him and Victor to put down their guns and orders Elena to flee. Sancho then lunges for Victor, they wrestle for the gun, and another shot rings out, hitting David.
Two years later, Victor, in jail, watches a wheelchair basketball
match where the now partially paralyzed David is a star player in the 1992 Summer Paralympics
, with his wife Elena cheering him on from the sidelines. Victor has made good use of his time, taking a correspondence course in education, working out, and enriching his mind with a variety of subjects, including the Bible
. Before he is released, another 4 years later, his mother dies and leaves him some money and a house in the slums. One of his first stops after he gets out of jail is his mother's grave, where he encounters Elena at her father's funeral. While leaving the cemetery
he meets Clara, Sancho's wife.
Elena, now off drugs and operating an orphanage
, tells David of her encounter with Victor. David stops by Victor's house and warns him not to go near his wife. Victor queries how he can do this, but David grabs his genitals and he doubles up. When David gets into his car to leave, he sees Clara arriving, and stay on to watch from a distance. Attracted by Victor's enthusiasm and good looks, Clara agrees to teach him how to make love, as well as pampering him with gifts and affection. Clara eventually falls in love with Victor. Victor begins to volunteer at the orphanage, which is happy to have him because he fixed the boiler, has a degree in education and is very good with the children. Elena objects, but can't find a compelling reason to throw Victor out.
David continues to trail Victor and finds out that Victor works at Elena's orphanage. He confronts him again, whereby Victor tells him that it was Sancho who made Victor squeeze the trigger. Afterwards, David tells his wife what Victor said, and the revealing context that Sancho shot David because he was having an affair with Clara. Elena is disgusted, but still plans to leave the orphanage to get away from Victor. Victor tells Elena that his original plan of revenge was to become the world's greatest lover, make love to Elena all night long, and then leave her hanging, but that he still loves her too much to do so.
Victor tells Clara that they should stop meeting, and they break up. While Victor is on night-shift at the orphanage, Elena comes in to remove her belongings, and agrees to a night of passion with Victor, on condition that he never contacts her again. Elena tells David herself about her infidelity, and although she plans to stay with him, he plots his own revenge. Clara leaves Sancho, who was abusing her, shooting him in the process. David shows up at Sancho's place with photographic proof of Victor and Clara's affair. Sancho and David drive to Victor's house, where Sancho shoots and kills Clara, while Clara also wounds Sancho, and Sancho finally kills himself.
At the end, David narrates a letter written to his wife from Miami, where he spends Christmas with some friends, apologizing for the way everything turned out. While at the orphanage, a pregnant Elena goes in labor and on the way to the hospital, she and Victor get stuck in heavy traffic. Victor is reminded of the circumstances of his own birth, and tells his unborn child that the fears of the Spanish have passed.
, CiBy 2000, and France 3 Cinéma, Live Flesh enjoyed mostly positive reviews in Spain
even by critics who had previously dismissed Almodóvar’s work criticizing the plot structure of his films. The reviewer in Sight and Sound praised the film’s "emotional pitch: raw, fearful, passionate," its brilliant cinematic qualities and the high standard acting by the five leads. In Neon magazine
, Martin Aston concluded that "sexy movies are rarely this thrilling, thrillers never this sexy- and the two seldom combine so movingly."
On Rotten Tomatoes
, Live Flesh currently holds a 79% 'Fresh' rating.
) and was nominated for Best Actor (Javier Bardem
) and Best Supporting Actress (Ángela Molina
).
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
drama
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
thriller film, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular...
, starring Liberto Rabal, Javier Bardem
Javier Bardem
Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los...
, and Francesca Neri
Francesca Neri
Francesca Neri is an Italian actress.Neri was born in Trento, she has twice received the Silver Ribbon Award for Best Actress from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, for Pensavo fosse amore invece era un calesse, directed by Massimo Troisi and Carne trémula .She has also...
. The film is loosely based on Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....
's book Live Flesh
Live Flesh
Live Flesh, is a psychological thriller by British author Ruth Rendell, published in 1986. It won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, and has also been loosely adapted into a critically acclaimed film of the same name by Pedro Almodóvar.-Plot summary:The...
.
Plot
MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Christmas 1970: As the nation is held under a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
ordered by the Franco regime
Spanish State
Francoist Spain refers to a period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975 when Spain was under the authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco....
, a young prostitute Isabel Plaza Caballero (Penelope Cruz
Penélope Cruz
Penélope Cruz Sánchez is a Spanish actress. Signed by an agent at age 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón , to critical acclaim...
) gives birth in a bus to a son she names Victor. Twenty years later, Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal) shows up for a date he made with Elena (Francesca Neri
Francesca Neri
Francesca Neri is an Italian actress.Neri was born in Trento, she has twice received the Silver Ribbon Award for Best Actress from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, for Pensavo fosse amore invece era un calesse, directed by Massimo Troisi and Carne trémula .She has also...
), a junkie with whom he had sex a week earlier. Waiting for her dealer to arrive, Elena is not interested in seeing Victor and tells him to leave. Finally she gets a gun and orders him to leave. Enraged, Victor wrestles the gun from her, and in the process Elena gets knocked out, and the gun goes off.
A neighbor hears the shot and calls the police, and two cops respond to the report. The older cop, Sancho (Jose Sancho
José Sancho
José Asunción Martínez Sancho is a Spanish actor. Over a period of fifty years he has appeared extensively in Spanish television and films. He was born in Manises, Valencia in 1944. He divorced the singer María Jiménez, with whom he has a son named Alejandro...
), is an unstable alcoholic
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
who suspects his wife Clara (Angela Molina
Ángela Molina
Ángela Molina is a Spanish actress, and a daughter of Antonio Molina, Spanish singer and actor.Molina studied dance and theater art in the Escuela Superior de Madrid. She rose to international prominence after starring in Luis Buñuel's last movie That Obscure Object of Desire...
) of infidelity
Infidelity
In many intimate relationships in many cultures there is usually an express or implied expectation of exclusivity, especially in sexual matters. Infidelity most commonly refers to a breach of the expectation of sexual exclusivity.Infidelity can occur in relation to physical intimacy and/or...
. The younger cop, David (Javier Bardem
Javier Bardem
Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los...
), is more clean-cut, sober, and prefers to do things by the book. Through the window they catch sight of Victor physically struggling with Elena, and Sancho is ready to storm in, while David wants to call for a back-up. When they enter, Victor holds Elena hostage with her gun. David tries to calm him down and get him to drop his gun, but Sancho sabotages his efforts by continually threatening Victor. Finally, David puts his gun to Sancho's head, gets him and Victor to put down their guns and orders Elena to flee. Sancho then lunges for Victor, they wrestle for the gun, and another shot rings out, hitting David.
Two years later, Victor, in jail, watches a wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people in wheelchairs and is considered one of the major disabled sports practiced. The International Wheelchair Basketball Federation is the governing body for this sport. It is recognized by the International Paralympic Committee as the sole...
match where the now partially paralyzed David is a star player in the 1992 Summer Paralympics
1992 Summer Paralympics
The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Sports :The games consisted of 487 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport...
, with his wife Elena cheering him on from the sidelines. Victor has made good use of his time, taking a correspondence course in education, working out, and enriching his mind with a variety of subjects, including the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. Before he is released, another 4 years later, his mother dies and leaves him some money and a house in the slums. One of his first stops after he gets out of jail is his mother's grave, where he encounters Elena at her father's funeral. While leaving the cemetery
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
he meets Clara, Sancho's wife.
Elena, now off drugs and operating an orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
, tells David of her encounter with Victor. David stops by Victor's house and warns him not to go near his wife. Victor queries how he can do this, but David grabs his genitals and he doubles up. When David gets into his car to leave, he sees Clara arriving, and stay on to watch from a distance. Attracted by Victor's enthusiasm and good looks, Clara agrees to teach him how to make love, as well as pampering him with gifts and affection. Clara eventually falls in love with Victor. Victor begins to volunteer at the orphanage, which is happy to have him because he fixed the boiler, has a degree in education and is very good with the children. Elena objects, but can't find a compelling reason to throw Victor out.
David continues to trail Victor and finds out that Victor works at Elena's orphanage. He confronts him again, whereby Victor tells him that it was Sancho who made Victor squeeze the trigger. Afterwards, David tells his wife what Victor said, and the revealing context that Sancho shot David because he was having an affair with Clara. Elena is disgusted, but still plans to leave the orphanage to get away from Victor. Victor tells Elena that his original plan of revenge was to become the world's greatest lover, make love to Elena all night long, and then leave her hanging, but that he still loves her too much to do so.
Victor tells Clara that they should stop meeting, and they break up. While Victor is on night-shift at the orphanage, Elena comes in to remove her belongings, and agrees to a night of passion with Victor, on condition that he never contacts her again. Elena tells David herself about her infidelity, and although she plans to stay with him, he plots his own revenge. Clara leaves Sancho, who was abusing her, shooting him in the process. David shows up at Sancho's place with photographic proof of Victor and Clara's affair. Sancho and David drive to Victor's house, where Sancho shoots and kills Clara, while Clara also wounds Sancho, and Sancho finally kills himself.
At the end, David narrates a letter written to his wife from Miami, where he spends Christmas with some friends, apologizing for the way everything turned out. While at the orphanage, a pregnant Elena goes in labor and on the way to the hospital, she and Victor get stuck in heavy traffic. Victor is reminded of the circumstances of his own birth, and tells his unborn child that the fears of the Spanish have passed.
Cast
- Javier BardemJavier BardemJavier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los...
as David - Francesca NeriFrancesca NeriFrancesca Neri is an Italian actress.Neri was born in Trento, she has twice received the Silver Ribbon Award for Best Actress from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, for Pensavo fosse amore invece era un calesse, directed by Massimo Troisi and Carne trémula .She has also...
as Elena - Liberto Rabal as Victor Plaza
- Angela MolinaÁngela MolinaÁngela Molina is a Spanish actress, and a daughter of Antonio Molina, Spanish singer and actor.Molina studied dance and theater art in the Escuela Superior de Madrid. She rose to international prominence after starring in Luis Buñuel's last movie That Obscure Object of Desire...
as Clara - Jose SanchoJosé SanchoJosé Asunción Martínez Sancho is a Spanish actor. Over a period of fifty years he has appeared extensively in Spanish television and films. He was born in Manises, Valencia in 1944. He divorced the singer María Jiménez, with whom he has a son named Alejandro...
as Sancho - Penelope CruzPenélope CruzPenélope Cruz Sánchez is a Spanish actress. Signed by an agent at age 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón , to critical acclaim...
as Isabel Plaza Caballero - Pilar BardemPilar BardemPilar Bardem is a Spanish film and television actress.Born María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz to performers Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro in Seville, Bardem began her screen career in 1965...
as Doña Centro - Alex Angulo as Conductor del autobús
- Mariola FuentesMariola FuentesMariola Fuentes is a Spanish actress.She usually plays tragicomical characters. She started to be known in 1997, thanks to her role in Perdona bonita, pero Lucas me quería a mí...
as Clementina - Yael Be as Chica
- Josep Molins as Josep
- Maria Rosenfeldt as Niña
Reception
Almodóvar’s twelfth film premiered on October 12, 1997. Produced by El DeseoEl Deseo
El Deseo is film production company owned by Spanish film producers the Almodóvar brothers . Films produced by the company include All About My Mother, Talk to Her, My Life Without Me, Bad Education, Volver, Broken Embraces and The Skin I Live In.- External links :* Film production company owned...
, CiBy 2000, and France 3 Cinéma, Live Flesh enjoyed mostly positive reviews in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
even by critics who had previously dismissed Almodóvar’s work criticizing the plot structure of his films. The reviewer in Sight and Sound praised the film’s "emotional pitch: raw, fearful, passionate," its brilliant cinematic qualities and the high standard acting by the five leads. In Neon magazine
Neon (magazine)
Neon was a British film magazine published monthly by Emap Consumer Media from December 1996 to February 1999. It attempted to be a refreshing alternative to other UK film magazines such as Empire....
, Martin Aston concluded that "sexy movies are rarely this thrilling, thrillers never this sexy- and the two seldom combine so movingly."
On Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, Live Flesh currently holds a 79% 'Fresh' rating.
Awards
The film won a 1998 Goya Award for Best Supporting Actor (José SanchoJosé Sancho
José Asunción Martínez Sancho is a Spanish actor. Over a period of fifty years he has appeared extensively in Spanish television and films. He was born in Manises, Valencia in 1944. He divorced the singer María Jiménez, with whom he has a son named Alejandro...
) and was nominated for Best Actor (Javier Bardem
Javier Bardem
Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor. In 2007 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as sociopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and has also garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne trémula, Boca a boca, Los...
) and Best Supporting Actress (Ángela Molina
Ángela Molina
Ángela Molina is a Spanish actress, and a daughter of Antonio Molina, Spanish singer and actor.Molina studied dance and theater art in the Escuela Superior de Madrid. She rose to international prominence after starring in Luis Buñuel's last movie That Obscure Object of Desire...
).