PEDRO ALMODÓVAR’S INTERNATIONAL
breakthrough film is an odd beast: part 1930s
screwball comedy, part 1960s thriller, and set in
a contemporary, thoroughly forward-thinking
1980s Spain. Like so many of the director’s films
it’s a story about women and the men who
don’t deserve them. Betrayal, abandonment,
attempted suicide and murder, terrorism and
gazpacho all play key roles, yet despite the deadly
serious issues, it all works out in the end, in an
optimistic story that contrasts one woman and
her resilience with her feckless lover.
Our heroine is Carmen Maura’s Pepa, a
voiceover artist and actress who has been dumped
by her older, married colleague and lover, Iván
(Fernando Guillén). She’s also pregnant and
desperate to tell him the news, but he’s dodging her
calls before he heads out of town with a new
woman. Meanwhile, Pepa’s friend Candela
(María Barranco) has learnt that her boyfriend
may be a terrorist and needs help to escape
conspiracy charges, while Iván’s long-incarcerated
wife Lucía (Julieta Serrano) sets out to win her
husband back or, at least, end his affairs.
It’s a tangled web even before Iván’s son
Carlos (Antonio Banderas) and his fiancée Marisa
(Rossy de Palma) come to view Pepa’s flat and
discover her relationship with his father. Some ofWomen On
The Verge Of
A Nervous
Breakdown
REVIEW
Julieta Serrano
grabs the
attention as
Lucia.what follows is classic farce as Pepa tries to track
down Iván, Lucía tries to find Pepa, and Candela
tries to figure out how to warn the police about
her boyfriend’s plans without herself ending up
in jail. Marisa drinks barbiturate-spiked
gazpacho meant for Iván and rethinks her entire
life, while Carlos develops a puppy-like crush
on the preoccupied Candela. It all becomes
occasionally surreal — the same mambo-themed
cab pulls up every time Pepa needs a ride, and
our heroine keeps chickens and ducks on the
balcony of her chic penthouse — and
surprisingly melancholy. Iván, who is heard but
rarely on screen, pulls strings and shapes lives
like the unseen Charlie ofCharlie’s Angels. He’s
presented as some Fellini-esque anti-hero,
romancing and abandoning a string of women in
a black-and-white, near dream sequence early on.
His voice does the damage, the seductive tones of
an accomplished actor leaving a trail of broken
women in his wake.
Originally Almodóvar wanted David
Hockney to design the sunny, pastel set of Pepa’s
penthouse that forms the base for the film, but
there was no way that the relatively young and
untried filmmaker could afford it. Instead, he
settled for a consciously artificial penthouse
overlooking a flagrantly artificial downtownTHE
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