Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Talk to Her

As few characters as there are in Pedro Almodovar’s Oscar-winning film, Talk to Her features a complex array of interconnected stories that resolve in unique and unexpected ways. It stars Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, Mariola Fuentes, and Geraldine Page.

Without giving it away, the players consist of a writer (Grandinetti), a bullfighter (Flores), a dancer (Watling), and a nurse (Cámara). The unique story follows the writer whose girlfriend, the bullfighter has been gored and lies in a coma, as he struggles to accept her fate while the hospital nurse takes care of another comatose patient, the dancer. A unique friendship develops as the two explore the tragedies they each face, but the bizarre nature of the nurse’s relationship with the dancer threatens to upend the entire film.

Almodovar isn’t one to shy away from modestly controversial subjects and bend gender norms. That this twisted, unusual drama works so well is a testament not only to his ability as a writer and a director, but in his ability to draw convincing and compelling performances from his actors. Talk to Her is the kind of movie you need to see at least once just to understand how unusual it is, and perhaps understand how Almodovar, among others, helped redefine Spanish cinema with fascinating, clever and inventive stories.