Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56229 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-04-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

From The New Yorker
Half an hour into Pedro Almodóvar's new film and you're already up to your chin in blood and lust. The action starts in 1970, with a messy childbirth on a bus; twenty years later, the boy born that night, who has grown into an aimless youth called Víctor (Liberto Rabal), lands himself in trouble over a junkie (Francesca Neri) and is accused of shooting a cop; later still, we find the junkie reformed and married to the cop (Javier Bardem), who is now in a wheelchair, and Víctor coming out of prison to settle old scores. And so the farce spins on-played, as usual, with impassioned gravity, yet somehow bereft of the high spirits that used to grace the director's films. A sort of vivid despair seems to have settled over his characters, and the happy ending feels like wishful thinking. With Angela Molina and Penélope Cruz. In Spanish. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A brilliant erotic thriller
Almodovar here shucks his tendency to blend campy sexuality and what he calls "screwball drama" for a strong work that instead fuses intense, real eroticism and the violence of a thriller into a powerful drama of fever-pitch emotionality.

Victor, born on a bus in a more typical Almodovar opening sequence featuring Penelope Cruz as his mother, is a loner and a man on the edge. He stalks Elena, a junkie-prostitute-drug dealer and forces his way inside her apartment. When two cops subsequently bust her for possession, they don't count on Victor, there with her, who pulls a gun on the cops in a scene that ends with one of them being paralyzed from a shot to the base of his spine.

Victor is nabbed and sent to prison. On his release, he discovers that Elena, whom he still lusts for, is now married to the paralyzed cop. And of course Victor cannot leave well enough alone.

It's the interplay of the second cop, the second cop's wife, Victor, and Elena that brings the emotional fluids here to a boil. The story development including surprising revelations establishes a momentum that results in a climax more than worthy of the preceding events, and that more than justifies the label of thriller for this film.

Lust, jealousy, murder, betrayal--all the juicy stuff that thrillers are made of--are, in the hands of a unique Spanish director, given a searing life of their own. It's truly a wonder to see this perfect mesh of out-of-control emotions, Spanish culture, and dazzling eroticism.

A brilliant film. Although All About My Mother is superb, it is more a return to Almodovar's sensibilities. Live Flesh is unique and is even unique for Almodovar. This makes it really special.

Heady stuff that never compromises - typical Almodovar
"Live Flesh" begins with Victor Plaza being born on a bus in Franco's Spain in 1970 and ends, twenty six years later, with... well, I wont spoil the ending; but typically with Almodovar, it is fitting and poetic. In between, we follow Victor on his journey into manhood, as he learns the hard way about disillusion, betrayal, love, lust, life, death, and tragedy.

As a young man, Victor believes that a one-off sexual encounter with a beautiful Italian junkie is something more than it is, and pesters her to such an extent that she draws a gun on him in order to get him to leave. A struggle ensues. The gun accidentally goes off, and although noone is hurt, it brings the unwelcome attention of two policemen. Another struggle ensues. Another shot is fired. One of the policemen is paralysed from the waist down. From then on, all four of their lives become tragically entwined; with deception and misunderstanding leading towards bitterness and envy. Inevitably, the lies are stripped away, unwanted truths are revealed, and all the various dilemmas are resolved amidst a scene of emotional and actual carnage.

This must sound like heady stuff, almost melodramatic? It is. This is Almodovar, after all. There is the usual complex plotting that reveals the strains that pull apart and bring together relationships while the emotional lives of the characters are laid bare. There is the relentless drive to resolve the emotional dilemmas while avoiding sentimentality. In short, there are all the usual touches that one expects from Almodovar, including the wonderful acting from the cast. Wonderful! A film that will draw you back again and again and again.

Check Out Bardem pre-"Before Night Falls"
I've seen all of Aldomovar's films, and I'd have to put this one right behind "All About My Mother." It has the typical Aldomovar intersecting characters & some of his trademark campiness, but the polish and professionalism that burst out in "All About My Mother" really started in "Live Flesh," his work prior to that Oscar-winning breakthrough.

Not mentioned in any of the other reviews here is the reason I rented the film: a chance to see Javier Bardem before his triumph as Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls." That alone is worth your checking out this movie. Watching Live Flesh," you gain even more respect for his depiction of Arenas. He demonstrates amazing range. There is a gaping chasm between these two characters. Just incredible acting.

[Trivia note: You can check out one of Bardem's first film appearances in an earlier Aldomovar picture called "High Heels." He's on screen for no more than seven seconds as a TV stage technician.]