Gael García Bernal

Gael García Bernal plays a four-layered part in Bad Education: Zahara, the Juan who plays Zahara, the Juan who presents himself as Ignacio, and Juan plain. Ryan Gilbey's review there counts that four-sided playing miraculous and names it the strongest antidote to the film's own coldness; by that piece the film at times resembles a clinical experiment on narrative, and what saves it from that is this performance. Edward Lawrenson's piece on The Science of Sleep gives a note from the shoot: for the scenes in which the hero flies among cardboard buildings the actor was really lowered into a water tank, with a back-projection screen set up behind him.