Bad Education

Pedro Almodóvar wrote and directed Bad Education, a Spanish crime drama that moves between the 1960s, the 1970s and 1980 and centres on two men who were friends at a Catholic boarding school. One of them, Ignacio, now working as an actor under the name Ángel, turns up at the office of the filmmaker Enrique Goded with a semi-autobiographical script about their schooldays and asks to play the lead. What begins as a possible film project becomes a search for the truth about the past, reopening old wounds and dreadful events connected to the school and to Father Manolo, who ran it and taught there.

The film was Almodóvar's eleventh feature, following Talk to Her and preceding Volver, and he also produced it with his brother Agustín. Gael García Bernal plays Ángel, Juan and Zahara, with Fele Martínez as Enrique, Daniel Giménez Cacho as Father Manolo and Lluís Homar as Sr. Berenguer, among a credited cast of twenty-two.

Made for about five million dollars, it took roughly forty million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.4 from around 66,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from about 1,100, while the critics' rating stands at 7.8 from 147 reviews, slightly above the audience scores.