Published in 2015
150 pages
Professor Emily Hughes joined the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law in 2011. She was previously a professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, where she taught criminal law, criminal procedure (investigations and adjudication), and a seminar discussing mitigation and the death penalty.
What is this book about?
Talk to Her (2002) is a hugely rich and interesting though ambiguous film that met with both popular success and critical acclaim. The film won an Oscar for best original screenplay and has been hailed by some critics as Pedro Almodóvar’s masterpiece. Yet like most of Almodóvar’s films, little is clear cut. The characters are complex and our affinity and empathy for them shifts throughout the film. In Studying Talk to Her, Emily Hughes provides an in-depth analysis of both the formal elements of the film (its narrative, genre, and auteur study) and the themes and issues it raises, discussing the social context of modern Spain and its old, traditional iconography; shifting attitudes towards gender; and, crucially, the film’s uneasy, morally ambiguous depiction of rape and the spectator’s reaction to it.
