Talk to Her
The 2002 Pedro Almodóvar film "Talk to Her" ("Hable con ella") has the chief character Benigno tell a story called "The Shrinking Lover" to Alicia, a long-term comatose patient whom Benigno, a male nurse, is assigned to care for. The film presents "The Shrinking Lover" in the form of a black-and-white silent melodrama. To prove his love to a scientist girlfriend, "The Shrinking Lover" protagonist drinks a potion that makes him progressively smaller. The resulting seven-minute scene, which is readily intelligible and enjoyable as a stand-alone short subject, is considerably more overtly comic than the rest of "Talk to Her"—the protagonist climbs giant breasts as if they were rock formations and even ventures his way inside a (compared to him) gigantic vagina. Critics have noted that "The Shrinking Lover" essentially is a sex metaphor. Later in "Talk to Her," the comatose Alicia is discovered to be pregnant and Benigno is sentenced to jail for rape. "The Shrinking Lover" was named Best Scene of 2002 in the "Skandies", an annual survey of online cinephiles and critics invited each year by critic Mike D'Angelo.