One of my favorite professors and I were discussing movies that make rape funny, like Happiness by Todd Solondz or Palindromes-also by Solondz. He mentioned that this movie was pretty good and had a really hilarious rape scene. True?
"The eyes are the windows to the skull."
- Phil Hartman
Well, Kika is a rather comic film. Why not make the rape scene comic as well? I found it quite funny like almost the whole film. Making the rape scene more dramatic or realistic would not fit into the film in my opinion (Remember for example the dress of Victoria Abril, you know what I mean).
shareErm, should rape be funny? Anyone who thinks it should be (like Almodovar) is actually a bit sick. The film itself is crap but that scene is really distasteful.
shareAnyone with any sense for good film can't say that "KIKA" is crap... Movie is simply beautiful - if you don't like it, go watch some more american *beep* (or let's say CRAP)...
Sorry for my english, I'm from Serbia...
Kisses to all Almodovar fans, Nikola.
Murder is shown as funny in more than a few movies. So why not rape? Is one form of violence worse than the others?
shareagreed, this movie sucked and I don't get the appeal to this director at all...I turned this crap off after that scene btw, or maybe it was during can't remember, either way it was stupid and the movie was crap just like the rest of almodovar's movies...btw @ OP, 'Happiness' had many hilarious moments, but the little boy puking every where was not one of them...and there was no rape scene in "Palindromes" I think you must be delusional...
shareI was reminded of "Man Bites Dog" and Russ Meyer's "Up!", which both have a rape scene that's played out for sick humor. And the poster who asked if abortion could be the subject of comedy should watch "Citizen Ruth."
Almodovar's later "The Skin I Live In" has a very similar rape sequence to "Kika" but without the humor: crazy criminal on the run turns up at the house where his mother works as a servant, ties her up to a kitchen chair, and then rapes the lady of the house.
Never a truer word was spoken.
shareThat was the funniest rape ever! They´ve killed!
shareAs bad as it might sound to say that rape is "funny" that particular scene in this film is. You have to be able to take it in its full context as part of a plot. Almodovar is not trying to imply anything with this scene. He is just incorporating it into the rest of the film. At least that is how I feel. People (especially American audiences) need to quit taking things they see on film so seriously.
shareI loved all the films I've seen so far by Almodovar, except this one - and it all comes down to the rape scene. Rape just isn't funny.
There will always be women in rubber flirting with me.
Rape just isn't funny.Actual rape of course is not, but almost everything*) can be funny, if the intentions are not malicious. I grant you though that the scene would not be funny to someone who has been raped.
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It's not like it's really brutal or violent in this scene. He reminds me more of a dog humping someone's leg. It's comical.
shareAlmodovar is not trying to imply anything with this scene. He is just incorporating it into the rest of the film. People (especially American audiences) need to quit taking things they see on film so seriously.I agree wholeheartedly, rmartel79.
If memory serves, the rape itself is portrayed as comic (perpetuated as it is by a generally hapless, buffoonish character) but the emotional effects on the characters afterward have a much more serious subtext. I felt Almodovar was making the point that it's the social stigma around rape that gives it much of its power to disrupt and damage those who suffer from it.
sharegod that was the best part, i mean the guy trying to beat his "record" and she's like kind of all nice about it in the beginning, and when he decides to "relieve" himself on the balcony or something hahahahah come on if ppl think american pie or there's something about mary is great and inoffensive then what's wrong with this? just because it's rape? i think it's because it had never been done before, come on, it's no big deal ppl, relax!
by the way what about the killer costume design? i had noticed it then i remembered gaultier and versace had designed them....awesome
>Murder is shown as funny in more than a few movies. So why not rape?
That's a really good point. Furthermore - if the woman getting comically raped gets pregnant and wants to terminate, d'you think they could make the abortion funny as well?
yes. It's just a movie. What I don't understand is how Americans are more than happy to watch heads getting cut off, people getting shot, people dying from overdosing, people getting run over, people being executed, people doing dangerous stunts, war movies, horror flics, people cutting off their limbs, women cutting off men's penises and then say it has gone too far when their is a rape scene. For what I know, rape is a much more common situation than is any of those other scenarios and is one of the subjects least explorered. I'm not saying I want to watch rape, but for how many friends of mine have been raped, it seems to be something that I, and everyone else, should try to understand more instead of shying away from. Realty sucks, ban poor people from movies, too, then. I once knew someone who stated that they didn't like "The City of God" because they didn't like looking at poor people. Even the Bible discusses rape.
shareI agree. I saw this movie in the theater, and the rape scene drew both laughs and gasps, as well as gasps at the laughter. I remember laughing at it myself, and then instantly feeling funny about it. I think that Almodovar intended it that way.
The scene is played comically, but the rape is still portrayed as a violation.
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First of all, this is FICTION, and it's really stupid to take it seriously, but Almodóvar always talk about taboos on his films, and that's why so many people feel offended watching them. Of course, people with an open mind will probably watch his movies as a portrayals of life, with the beauty and the ugliness of life.
In his films, Almodóvar doesn't defend nothing in particular, he just shows to the audience a story. And KIKA is critical to the TV reality shows, where we watch so many *beep* KIKA is a film advanced to his time, and the story is told with black jokes.
Great film.
Sorry for my english, I do my best, I'm from Barcelona.
I agree with Oliver.
This film also has many eliments of satire, which by its nature is extreme and rough around the edges.
My Spanish is very bad and my dvd does not have subtitles, but I can follow the story well enough and from what I can tell, it has a similar quality to many Almodovar films. In my opinion, Almoldovar- no matter how tacky, or tasteless someone might say this film is- seems to have the talent of an empath when it comes to women. The women in all his films are usually not the ones he is critiquing the most strongly. Look at the "mainstream" society males in so many of his films including this one, and you might notice a pattern- that they are depicted in a less than flattering light. In contrast- the women, with any flaw or weakness they might have, are seen more sympathetically. Not only that, he often focuses on their beneficence by establishing unexpected bonds between women such as girlfriends and mistresses of the same man, mothers and daughters, all coming together to support one another in crises. Think of Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) y Volver. Maybe this film is not an example of that exactly, but the thing about the rape and the murders is that they are done by a successful man. In contrast to the rapist and murderer, Kika, is seen bringing back someone from the dead and Victoria Abril's character is outfitted like an erotic superhero. Fantasy or not, I just keep thinking about that. The Since my Spanish is bad, I will have to "listen" more closely and see more things that I haven't picked up.
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exactly. the situation was built up in such as a way to make the scene comical. trying to break a record...
if something offends you, you shouldn't watch it. but if it's offending you, you should look into it, because it's obviously an unresolved issue in your head.
it's a dirty world Reich, say what you want
Curiously most yanks don't hesitate to bring their kids to theaters in order to watch the latest bloodbaths by Stallone (Rambo) Tarantino (Death Proof) or the films by Mel Gibson.
Yet they can't deal with an ABSURDIST COMEDY which shouldn't be taken seriously in the first place.
Rapes are not funny, neither murders. Everybody in his right mind knows that. Then why so many people laughs when some dude is killed in certain comic films? Because they know the intention of the film is NOT to glorify murderers!
Is the same case in Kika: Almodóvar (a fervent feminist) is NOT glorifying rapists. He's only using a rape-scene in a comic way. AND IT WORKS!
Please stop being more Popist than the Pope.
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Well, KIKA isn't behaving like the normal rapists's victim. The raper is a porn star with a sick sister-loveship, he is about to escape when he finds Kika there on the bed, and she makes him hot. She doesn't scream or cry, instead the raper wants to get another high score (5 orgasms), and she's like "What, you've just had 3 so far?"
Rape is terrible, but in this movie, it's not like some 'sick' humour in that there's a real, suffering victim in context to some sick jokes. The humour of that scene is that Kika is impatiently waiting, then a guy calls the cops that prefer playing with the NintendoGameboy or something, and when they finally show up, they need to grab the rapers legs to try to pull him off, but he keeps pushing and pushing because the 5th orgasm is coming along, Kika is trying to explain to the cops "Well, he's about to make a high score of 5 orgasms." - Cop: "How many so far?" - Kika: "Four!"
SOMETHING like that, not exactly. I think that's a funny scene. There's no real suffering and all. And by the end of that scene, the raper jumps on the balcony, jerks off when this media-sadistic host turns up because she heard there's a raping and she's a total media-sadist looking for shocking film footage... she stands there, looking up to the balcony like a christian to god in heaven when his scum lands on her cheek.
That's funny. Not healthy, but funny.
"D-E-S-T-R-O-Y : E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G"
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It's pretty much the centre piece of the whole film, and while it is definitely played for some kind of laughs early on it is pretty damn awkward to sit there and accept as it is presented, but it goes on for so long that by the end of it the whole thing is SO absurd, that yes, you really cannot help but laugh.
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http://tinyurl.com/6beuand
I laughed when the police came in and said "police please unmount this woman" holding guns to his head and he goes on.
Its called black humor, shooting somebody in the head and splattering the brains to the wall isnt funny when it happens in real life but I guess less people have a problem seeing the black humor in such a scene in pulp fiction.
Anyways I think in Matador it was there was an almost rape scene and the woman says to the police she hardly felt something it was too small, or something along those lines, I found that hilarious too.
Almodovar mixes the tragic and the black humor in many films, which is almost impossible but he manages to do that.
Talk to her has black humor in it but its also tragic, just because its not extremely judgemental many people (often US citizens) get upset about these films.