Why I love Women on the Verge of a Ner­vous Breakdown

Why are Candela’s ear­rings shaped like lit­tle Ital­ian espres­so mak­ers? It’s a ques­tion that brings me back, again and again, to Pedro Almodóvar’s unim­peach­able 1988 film, Women on the Verge of a Ner­vous Break­down. At the core of that ques­tion lies the genius of this eccen­tric and beloved Span­ish film­mak­er. Those ear­rings are prob­a­bly not the rea­son why the film became an inter­na­tion­al hit upon its release, court­ing the atten­tion of the Acad­e­my a full decade before All About My Moth­er won Best For­eign Lan­guage Film at the 2000 Oscars. Those ear­rings are sym­bol­ic of the colour­ful and fren­zied cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse that Almod­ó­var been build­ing now for close to 40 years.

He’s still build­ing – his lat­est, Juli­eta, has already proven a hit with crit­ics in Spain. Every new Almod­ó­var film is an occa­sion to mar­vel at his bril­liance, not least as a fan­tas­tic writer as he so often finds the per­fect bal­ance between sus­pense, laugh­ter and tears. An Almod­ó­var film is also a sin­gu­lar visu­al expe­ri­ence, packed with ref­er­ences but also whol­ly authen­tic in its dis­or­gan­ised arrange­ment. And, of course, he has earned our admi­ra­tion by intro­duc­ing us to some of cinema’s finest actress­es: Pené­lope Cruz, Vic­to­ria Abril, Rossy de Pal­ma, Marisa Pare­des and Car­men Maura.

He has cov­ered a broad range of sub­jects: trans­sex­u­al­i­ty in High Heels and All About My Moth­er; love and loss in Talk to Her and The Flower of My Secret; dia­bol­i­cal revenge in The Skin I Live In; moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tions in Volver; and aban­don­ment in his forth­com­ing Juli­eta. His 2013 com­e­dy I’m So Excit­ed seems to exist as an out­lier, yet Almod­ó­var start­ed out with this kind of mad­cap com­e­dy, in films like Law of Desire and Pepi, Luci, Bom. Women on the Verge of a Ner­vous Break­down is the film where Almod­ó­var man­ages to draw upon almost all of his pet themes at the same time. He puts every­thing into the pot and comes out with a film that’s light, refresh­ing and tangy.

It’s about women who are caused to suf­fer by men and the ways – com­ic and trag­ic – in which they vent their anger. After their break-up, Pepa (Car­men Mau­ra) needs to talk to Ivan about some­thing impor­tant before he goes off on a trip with anoth­er woman. For every sub-plot, there’s a woman with a tac­it con­nec­tion to the for­mer cou­ple. Pepa’s pro­tégée, Can­dela (Maria Bar­ran­co), pro­vid­ed lodg­ing to the Shi­ite ter­ror­ists who planned to hijack Ivan’s plane to Stock­holm. His ex-wife, Lucia (Juli­eta Ser­ra­no), also tries to reach him to make him pay for the years she spent in an insane asy­lum. Ivan’s son (Anto­nio Ban­deras) is under the influ­ence of his rough vir­gin fiancée (Rossy de Pal­ma). Final­ly there’s Pauli­na, a fem­i­nist lawyer whose shad­ow looms large over the char­ac­ters until we dis­cov­er she, too, might be on the verge of full collapse.

The film opens on a clear­ly fake scale mod­el of the build­ing Pepa lives in, her voiceover announc­ing that she can’t save her rela­tion­ship. So what’s the point of this sto­ry? Is it just so Almod­ó­var can play with his char­ac­ters like pieces of Lego? Add to this the kitschy-vin­tage 1950s-style set and it becomes easy to allow the sto­ries to inter­twine nat­u­ral­ly upon first view­ing. But kooky coin­ci­dences aren’t so kooky or coin­ci­den­tal in real life, are they?

For me, the first view­ing was pure enter­tain­ment. The sec­ond was a rev­e­la­tion. All the details I thought were part of the eclec­tic mess sud­den­ly became clues that had been left for the view­er to find. The film builds up a cer­tain mood which hints at (with­out reveal­ing) what’s going to hap­pen next. From the mod­el to the fake view of the Madrid sky­line vis­i­ble from Pepa’s ter­race, every­thing is designed to make you aware that this is only cinema.

But just because you know it’s cin­e­ma, doesn’t mean you can’t be sur­prised by what you see. Char­ac­ters’ states of mind are exag­ger­at­ed, there are clichés every­where and ref­er­ences to Hitch­cock are all too easy to spot. All this makes the film time­less. Almod­ó­var plays with the para­dox between the arti­fi­cial appear­ance of the movie and the feel­ings we expe­ri­ence while watch­ing it. Of course, fool­ing the audi­ence like this isn’t enough to ensure your sta­tus as a vision­ary direc­tor. The film’s mid-cen­tu­ry ref­er­ences would have lit­tle impact with­out the accom­pa­ny­ing image of women that is both pro­gres­sive and iron­i­cal­ly old fashioned.

On one hand you have a strik­ing title which reminds you of a women’s dis­ease of yes­ter­year, invent­ed by men to jus­ti­fy their sex­u­al frus­tra­tion – hys­te­ria. On the oth­er hand, the whole point of the movie is that des­per­ate­ly wait­ing for a phone call and not being able to regain con­trol of your life after a bad break-up doesn’t make you weak. Car­men Maura’s per­for­mance per­fect­ly demon­strates that being on the verge of a ner­vous break­down isn’t the same as ful­ly freak­ing out.

At one point, a taxi dri­ver who con­stant­ly cross­es Pepa’s path pro­nounces this unfor­tu­nate sen­tence: ​“A lady’s no dan­ger­ous if you know how to han­dle her.” Almod­ó­var knows how to han­dle his actress­es, he knows how to reveal both their inner and exte­ri­or beau­ty. But the moral of the film seems to go against the taxi driver’s asser­tion: women can han­dle it alone, espe­cial­ly if they’re wear­ing large nov­el­ty earrings.