`Somos un sueòo impossible' sings with her deep and almost inhuman voice Chavela Vargas in Almodovar's film `Carne Tremula'. And this is what this film is all about: a love story, which reaches and overcomes the limits of an impossible dream.
Almodovar, based on Ruth Rebel's novel, creates an imposing, intense film in his own, familiar to us, magical way. The film evolves and revolves around the lives, passions, almost Freudian eroticism and weaknesses of five different (or so they seem) people. The main protagonist is deeply in love with Helena and after a fight in her apartment he is accused of shooting one of the police officers that arrived to `rescue' Helena. Victor is sentenced to six years in prison. When he completes his sentence he finds out that Helena is married to the police officer he was accused of shooting. Victor is having an affair with the abused and desperate wife of the second police officer in order to come closer to Helena. How will all the characters react and interact with Victor's invasion in their lives?
Almodovar brings the characters together, messes their lives, crosses their paths in his own magnificent way. The way that the characters meet, react and interact is based on the principle of coincidence, which hardly is happening by mere luck. On the contrary, the coincidences seem so delicately directed and calculated that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to suggest that the reach the limits of genius.
However, if the primary principle upon the film is based on and evolves around is coincidence, then the second principle should be sexuality and eroticism. The whole film is diffused with intense and deep eroticism. More specifically, images of naked flesh are the primary target of Almodovar's camera. However, the direction is erotic without a trace of vulgarity. The Carne Tremula (Live Flesh in its English translation) appears throughout the film aroused, with powerful hot and warm colours like yellow, orange and red -colours that one feels that they have taken over the whole picture throughout the movie-. In addition, Flesh appears not simply as a material of which humans are made of but also as a projection of people's feelings and desires, as an extension of the inner self. The Flesh is presented so alive as if it has a mind of its own. It is presented warm and wavy, it moves and it comes together in a symmetrical, rhythmic but yet natural way. Moreover, whatever it is enclosed within the Flesh's periphery is following its erotic dance with the same colours, movements and breaths.
Almodovar is creating the profiles of five people, who look so different but then again they are developed on the same basis. All of the characters are moved by one and single thing: their strong, unshakeable and nonnegotiable desire to find and experience love. A love, nevertheless, unspoken, as it is only verbalized by the expression of the Flesh, the intense magnetizisation of two different Fleshes breathing the same air. All of the characters desperately struggle to maintain their other half whichever the means. In this way, the Flesh takes over the Mind and their desire for love becomes an obsession, a sicken passion which destroys their lives. There's no sense of logic and reality when the passion takes over. Feelings are being over-dramatized and the script focuses on the human relationships. Everyone betrays and is being betrayed. And that's exactly what Almodovar wants to highlight. Is it love a desperate voice of fear and loneliness or is it the absolute enosis of the Live Flesh?
When Victor says to Clara that their affair should come to an end she cries out `Please, don't leave me, I won't ask you anything, just let me love you.' The language used in the film is an unshameless and graceful manifest to the human eroticism. This particular modern, everyday language comes in contrast to the non-vulgar and sensual love scenes and even to the traditional erotic Spanish music.
Once more, Almodovar highlights the role of the feminine -a characteristic that is present, apparent and obvious to the majority of his films-, as the whole world seems to unfurl around women. In this movie Flesh is certainly a feminine representation. Moreover, men's actions emphasize women's personalities and characteristics.
The actors fall easily and willingfully into the director's `trap' and follow him to an endless dance of eroticism and passion. Javier Bardem shows excellent moments of talent which are going to certified on his later role choices (including the magnificent Before the Night Falls of Julian Schnabel, in 2000, which brought him broader recognition and many awards.) Liberto Rabal, from the other hand, represents the typical male, almost iconic model, of an Almodovar film, representing fittingly every woman's (or man's one could suggest) fantasy.
The desperate scream of the protagonists is identified with the tragic lyrics of the main song of the film `Somos un sueòo impossible'. We are an impossible dream.
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