Bad Education

      Bad Education is a 2004 Spanish film, directed and written by Pedro Almodovar, that begins with the re-acquittance of two supposed childhood friends and former lovers, as they discuss their current situations in life over the introduction of a movie script, which leads to the revealing of their scandal ridden past; while forever changing their lives. Ignacio, or the man claiming to be Ignacio, appears at office of his old friend, Enrique,as a begging actor looking for work and hoping to cash in on an old relationship tie. After Enrique, a present day film producer and director, reveals his lack of ideas, hence lack of work; the assumed Ignacio, now demanding to be called Angel, reveals a movie script he has written, entitled, “The Visit”. With the introducing of “The Visit”, the film reveals Enrique and Ignacio's past relationship as childhood friends and lovers through a series of flashbacks, as the script is a fictional screenplay based on the two's actual relationship and experiences as students of a religious, assumed to be Catholic, boarding school; with an added fictional plot detailing their adult lives. It was at that very boarding school in which Enrique and Ignacio met, shared love and a sexual experience, and were instantly broken apart by Ignacio's sexual molester, Padre Manolo; the same man who serves as the pedophile antagonist in Ignacio's screenplay, “The Visit”. After Ignacio, now demanding to be called Angel, runs off angered with Enrique's choice of not having him star as the lead role, Zahara, Enrique chooses to look for Ignacio at his mother's home. Once Enrique arrives at Ignacio's childhood home, he quickly discovers that Ignacio has been dead for some time and his brother, Juan, now demanding to be called Angel, has in fact tricked Enrique into believing he was Ignacio in an effort for a chance to make it big as an actor. Even after learning of Juan's deceit, Enrique chooses not to confront the man claiming to be Angel, and even makes him the lead role in the film in exchange for sex. It is not until during the production of “The Visit”, does Enrique receive a Visit from Padre Manolo claiming that “The Visit” is actually a non-fiction screenplay, due to the fact that the script is not only based on the actual blackmail, but is as well serves as the actual blackmail in which the real Ignacio arranged against the priest before Padre Manolo and Juan ultimately killed him. As soon as this stunning story of deception and greed is revealed, the film ends with the textual telling of Juan's success as an actor and Juan's hit-and-run murder of his former lover- turned blackmailer priest , Padre Manolo.

      The theme of Bad Education that seemed paramount was cynicism, as it was feature shared by all four characters involved. Everyone knowingly used someone else for their own gain: Padre Manolo used a young Ignacio for sex and Juan for sex and eventual blackmail, Juan used sex to lure Padre Manolo into helping kill Ignacio and both Ignacio and Enrique to jump-start his acting career, and Enrique used Juan for sex in exchange for the lead role in his movie. It was a film that featured vicious and cynical characters that were all in way some intertwined in web of lies and deceit; it had many characters of a Neo-noir style film. The Neo-noir reference is even heavily suggested towards the end of the film when both Juan and Padre Manolo are leaving a movie theater that is showing only films of Film noir, and Padre Manolo makes a statement along the lines of, “I felt as if those movies were talking about us”.

      

      As a viewer of this film, do not only expect a heavy load of sexually-oriented scenes and innuendo’s between males, but also expect a masterfully written script that creatively uses the elements of drama,deceit, mystery, and murder. While Bad Education hit some slow and anticlimactic scenes, it's underlying ironic plot paired with it's many surprising twists, makes this particular work of Pedro Almodovar's a must watch for any fan of the Neo-noir and mystery drama genres.