Quindecim

Issue date: 3/9/05 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Bad Education, a thought-provoking, direct story of a priest´s sexual desire for a male student, was rated a belying NC-17 in the United States.

Sadism has always had its place in education. It's been alive and well in gym classes, sex-ed and lunchroom lines from the very beginning. No doubt, a good teacher is invaluable, but not all teachers are good.

The power a teacher has over a student leaves a malleable blank space which can be filled with any kind of intent. In Bad Education, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, the conflict between teacher and student becomes painfully clear. While the teacher holds knowledge and power, the student has inherent youth and potential - both lost to the teacher forever.

This can be a formula for unconquerable envy and the sadism which follows, and in Bad Education, it's coupled with pedophilia in which the student becomes a treasured object of sexual desire. The sexual desire of a priest.

As in his last film, Talk to Her, Almodóvar presents material which is sexual in nature and liable to make members of the audience cringe. While Talk to Her seemed to have a stronger sense of meaning, Bad Education has the advantage of presenting a cross-section of something which exists, but is unpleasant to confront.

Roger Ebert correctly calls Bad Education a "Hitchcockian identity puzzle." The film encapsulates stories within stories, doubles characters over as each other and seems to hide from itself. Eventually, a coherent picture of the truth emerges from the fragments that make up the narrative of the film. This structure actually seems tailor-made for the story it fields. The reason sexual crimes such as pedophilia so often seem to lurk below the surface and go unpunished is that nobody - not the perpetrators, nor the victims, nor the bystanders - wants to believe that they happen.

Essentially, the film rotates around a short story, "The Visit," written by the character Ignacio, who is deceased. It recounts his days in school, when he was in love with another student, Enrique, and being sexually abused by his literature teacher, Father Manolo. Later, he's presented with an opportunity to blackmail the priest with threats of publishing the story.

Bad Education begins years after the fact, with Ignacio's brother, Juan (Gael García Bernal), presenting a copy of the story to the now-successful-director, Enrique (Fele Martínez). Juan lies, passing himself off as the grown-up Ignacio, and also asks for work as an actor. Enrique decides to make "The Visit" into a film, and as he proceeds to do so, involved parties step forward, lies are uncovered and a picture of the truth begins to emerge. The structure of the film operates by the same logic as do trials of sexual crimes.

While the subject matter of Bad Education is obviously extremely volatile, Almodóvar can be credited for having maintained distance, balance and fairness in his film. The moral questions of the issue at hand are presented through clearly defined victims and perpetrators, but Almodóvar shies away from melodrama with villains and innocents.

This composure is the strongest asset Bad Education has to offer. It allows Almodóvar to expose without judging. He often has a sense of humor, and sometimes, he even shows Catholic education in a positive light.

Bad Education was released in its native Spain with a rating approximately equivalent to R. In the United States, the MPAA assigned the rating of NC-17 to the film, essentially bookmarking it as pornography. Bad Education has undeniably graphic homosexual scenes, but comparing these to the scenes of violence admitted under the ratings of R and below, it comes as a surprise that images of sex are considered to be more dangerous to the public than images of violence.

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