【Kinky, Ironic, Kooky Almodovar】
Spanish director Pedro Almodsvar spins out enough frenetic material for four normal movies in this penetrating satire.+++
Peter Coyote costars as Nicholas, an American writer living in Spain whose wife has killed herself..
.. and whose stepson, Ramon (Alex Casanova), is obsessive and narcoleptic.*****
Ramon's ex-girlfriend, Andrea "Scarface" Garacortada is a TV show host for a program that could be called "Spain's Most Violent Home Videos."
Played by Spanish star Victoria Abril, Andrea is seductive, manipulative..
.. and will stop at nothing to get a story, spending most of the movie with a camera strapped to the top of her head.....
Kika carries on an affair with Ramon's stepfather, Nicholas, an expatriate American writer.
Nicholas novelizes the tragedies in his life, including his wife's death, and extends his opportunism to yet another level by appearing on a talk show to promote his work.!!
He is played by Peter Coyote, who appropriately conveys Nicholas's dispassionate and conniving personality.+++
"Kika" is both a dark comedy and a sharp cultural commentary.
It is an indictment of the contemporary preoccupation with watching someone else's life, that oxymoronic phenomenon we know as "reality TV."
Through the deft juxtaposition of tragic and comic images, Almodovar lets us watch the watchers, peep in on the voyeurs, and in doing so he reflects us to ourselves.★★★★★