Bad Education

First screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Pedro Almodóvar's powerful and passionate semi-autobiographical melodrama follows the intertwining stories of two boys, Enrique (Fele Martínez) and Ignacio (Gael García Bernal), who fall in love at an abusive Catholic school and are parted by a jealous paedophile priest. Sixteen years later, Enrique, now a successful filmmaker, is casting about for an idea for a new film when a young cross-dressing actor, claiming to be Ignacio but known as 'Angel', approaches him with a short story based on their schooldays together. Enrique decides to use the story, and casts Angel in the film's lead role, despite his discovery that Angel is not in fact Ignacio, who died three years earlier shortly after completing the story, but his younger brother. Enrique's film also includes scenes in which the grown-up Ignacio tracks down the Catholic priest who abused them as boys, and these scenes soon become mirrored by real-life events. Almodóvar moves away from his trademark quirky comedy with this dark and brooding drama, using a complex 'film-within-a-film' structure to create a noir-like sense of mystery and blurred identity, and to explore the relationship between fantasy and reality.

Producer: Agustín Almodóvar
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Producer: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer: Pedro Almodóvar
Actor: Lluís Homar
Actor: Petra Martínez
Actor: Nacho Perez
Actor: Raul Garcia Forneiro
Actor: Francisco Boira
Actor: Alberto Ferreiro
Actor: Roberto Hoyas
Actor: Francisco Maestre
Producer: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
Producer: Eddie Vaisman
Actor: Alex Wolff
Executive Producer: Julia Lebedev
Producer: Julia Lebedev
Producer: Fred Berger
Director: Cory Finley
Actor: Geraldine Viswanathan
Producer: Mike Makowsky
Writer: Mike Makowsky
Executive Producer: Caroline Jaczko
Actor: Sarita Montiel
Cinematographer: José Luis Alcaine
Actor: Allison Janney
Music: Alberto Iglesias
Actor: Ray Romano
Actor: Hugh Jackman
Actor: Daniel Giménez Cacho
Producer: Oren Moverman
Actor: Juan Fernandez
Actor: Fele Martínez
Actor: Gael García Bernal
Actor: Javier Cámara
Actor: Leonor Watling