WHILE “Talk to Her” shows a newly pensive side to Pedro Almodovar, he lets his frisky alter ego out to play with “Shrinking Lover,” a silent, black-and-white film within the film.
In it, a scientist who has accidentally swallowed a shrinking potion roams over the landscape of his lover’s body, finally disappearing into her vagina – a typically surreal and provocative Almodovar touch.
“Perhaps they will talk a lot about the vagina, which is the more obvious and shocking image,” he says.
But the little film within “Talk to Her,” is, in fact, a clever allegory, a way of poeticizing a narrative component involving Benigno that Almodovar admits he “didn’t even feel capable of shooting.
“That silent film has a lot of different meanings, both for me and for the narration of the film,” he says. “It’s one of the key elements in order to be able to understand Benigno and it’s one of my favorite parts of the film.”
Almodovar is so enamored of “Shrinking Lover,” he says he’s tempted to turn it into a full-length feature, and already has a treatment mapped out.