Gael Garcia Bernal starred in this dazzling noirish tale of mystery and a shared childhood secret when Almodovar examined the effect of Franco-era religious schooling and sexual abuse on the lives of two longtime friends.

Powerful and passionate, this semi-autobiographical melodrama follows the intertwining stories of two boys - Enrique (Fele Martinez) and Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal) - who fall in love at an abusive Catholic school only to be parted by a jealous paedophile priest. When years later a nervous young actor, claiming to be Ignacio, turns up at Enrique's offices – now a fashionable film director – with an unpublished short story he has written, and a possible view to making it into a film, Enrique is thrilled to see him, though baffled not to recognise his adult face. When the story turns out to be a fictionalised account of their affair at school, and how it was destroyed by the abusive Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho), in the screenplay Ignacio is expelled and grows up to be a drug-addicted drag queen who turns up at the school for a terrible reckoning with his fatherly tormentor. Yet as he reads, the story unfolds ambiguously on screen. Is it a flashback? Is it how Enrique sees it in his mind's eye? Or is it, in fact, footage from a movie Enrique is one day to make?

With Bad Education Almodóvar moved away from his trademark quirky comedy toward a darker, more brooding style of drama; the complex film-within-a-film structure creating a noir-like sense of mystery and blurred identity to explore the relationship between fantasy and reality. Ranked amongst his great masterpieces, it stands today as one of Almodóvar’s most personal films and remains unmissable for any fan of the Spanish master.

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