Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar created a fiery sensation with this nutty screwball comedy, about a slightly unbalanced actress in a desperate situation. "Women on the Verge..." was Almodovar's international breakthrough film, and is one of his best loved.

my introduction to the world of Pedro Almodovar......

Pedro Almodovar, an internationally and critically acclaimed Spanish director, takes eccentricity and neuroses to new heights in WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, one of his most well known films. Pepa (Carmen Maura), an actress, has just been left alone and pregnant by her lover. It turns out that this situation is only one of many problems that she encounters. Her friend, Candela (Maria Barranco) is having a crisis of her own. Then, there's the matter of the gazpacho that Pepa has prepared--spiked with thirty sleeping pills--but, I won't ruin that part of the story for you as to what prompts her to prepare such a sleep-inducing dish. The whole mood is comparable to a telenovela (Spanish language soap opera). The atmosphere is melodramatic (hence, the reason for the title), desperate and probes at the main character, her plight and whether she can hold herself together in the eye of so many simulataneous storms around her.

I'll be honest in saying that I didn't "get" this film when I first saw it. I can relate to viewers who didn't like it. Initially, when it had finished, I thought, "What was THAT?" Almodovar's writing style really seems very analytical and feels more like a clinical study of what heights someone will go when emotionally instable. It was hard for me to really feel connected to any of the characters, and the atmosphere felt more than a little like intersecting episodes in a serial. Yet, upon reflection, I can appreciate the depth, skillful artistic direction and beauty of the characters that we come to know. Carmen Maura is very convincing as one of the lead characters and she doesn't appear to be acting at all! What's more, this is probably the only film with (a very young) Antonio Banderas, where I actually WANTED to watch him because the story had substance, for once! I reccomend that you see this just so you can get a sense for yourself of the style of Almodovar and why his films leave audiences talking..... August 18, 2007

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Almodovar's first international hit, this kinetic, farcical romp mixes up absurd comic situations and bizarre, coincidental encounters between ex-lovers, jealous wives, Shiite terrorists, and sexy apartment seekers. Maura heads up a terrific cast, playing the hysteric Pepa with pathos and manic passion, while Barranco and Serrano (as Ivan's unhinged, gun-toting wife) are brilliantly zany. Watch for future Hollywood star Banderas in a small but memorable role as Ivan's randy son. No one does urban screwball comedy like Almodovar, or loves these "Women" quite as much. July 10, 2007

Thanks to Angelika for showing this Almodovar Movie!

I liked it and I miss this type of comedy.
The taxi driver was hilarious! September 29, 2006

What's up with Almodovar's DVD releases???

This is a great movie....Why isn't it available on DVD in the US? There's a festival of Pedro's movies in the theaters around the country right now....but can you buy his DVDs...for most of them, NO! So, what's the story? Is there a re-release in the works? A boxed set for Chirstmas? Deluxe versions with commentary? Let us fans in on the secret! Thanks!~Tom Burkert August 22, 2006

Enjoyable Comedy. Not quite up to Hepburn and Grant!

`Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' written and directed by Spaniard Pedro Almodovar has been described by some other reviewers as a `screwball comedy'. I generally agree with this assessment, except that compared to the greatest of this genre, for example, `Bringing Up Baby' with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, this effort is just a bit weak, primarily in the weaknesses of the male protagonists, who generally make short appearances, largely as a means to introduce the various stressed out women of the story, of which there are four or five, depending on how you count them.

Like `Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, the next Almodovar film, this involves a film within a film in that the lead character played by Carmen Maura is a voiceover actress who dubbs female voices. They appear to be working on an American film starring Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden whose name escapes me.

The lion's share of the story is the increasingly desperate efforts of two main characters to work out their failed relation with the primary male character, as one woman, the Maura character is the man's long time mistress, and the other, played by Julieta Serrano, is his wife. The other women are stressed out by an oddly contemporary subplot in which some Shiihite terrorists are planning to blow up a flight to Copenhagen, the very same flight the lead male character is to be taking with his new mistress.

Oddly enough, Antonio Banderas, who gets second billing on the cover of the tape is hardly even the third or fourth most important character in the film. Either his credit is being boosted due to his more recent celebrity or he was among the best known Spanish film actors even in 1988.

This is a very entertaining film, at least as good as a lesser Woody Allen movie, but not quite up to the best comedies.
January 11, 2006

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