Spoonixel
Amateur movie with Big budget
Solidrariol
Am I Missing Something?
Alistair Olson
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
gavin6942
A woman's lover leaves her, and she tries to contact him to find out why he has left. She confronts his wife and son, who are as clueless as she. Meanwhile her girlfriend is afraid the police are looking for her because of her boyfriend's criminal activities.What I have to say about this film is really a side note. I could talk about the film as a whole, and how it strikes me as a sophisticated soap opera. But that is not what I found interesting.I found it interesting that the film kept saying "Shiite terrorist" rather than "Muslim terrorist". This makes me wonder if people in other countries are more knowledgeable with regard to different faiths. Most likely, yes. But it is my impression that few people in America know the difference between Shiite and Sunni, and even fewer knew before 2001.
valadas
Pedro Almodóvar's films are always about crazy or half-crazy women meddling themselves in uncommon events of everyday life but this one breaks the record. Three more or less crack-brained women (plus a fourth one who will spent most of time in the movie deeply asleep for having drunk "gazpacho" with a lot of sedative drugs) cause a big mess the most of it taking place in a Madrid luxury apartment and the whole thing because the ex-husband of one of them (she has recently come off a lunatic asylum or clinic) and lover of another one has recently left the latter. This comedy, full of burlesque episodes and scenes has also as characters two police officers who end up by falling deeply asleep because they have also drunk the ill-fated "gazpacho", the son of the jilter and his girlfriend (the one deeply asleep as above referred). This comedy is funny and makes the most of a series of incredible plot coincidences such as for instance the awkward blond taxi driver who is always there by chance any time anyone needs a taxi and the circumstance of the son coming to the apartment of the jilted woman because she has advertised it to be rent in an estate agency. Since they didn't know each other this leads also to a funny situation. A passable movie indeed and funny enough.
thisissubtitledmovies
excerpt, full review at my location.Director Pedro Almodovar shot to international fame in 1988 when Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown was released. It was nominated for an Oscar and won numerous other awards, as well as smashing box office records in Spain. It is a stylish black comedy that oozes visual flair and a sharp sense of humour from start to finish. It is easy to see why this film was so successful and why Pedro Almodovar has become such a cult icon. Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, although slightly dated, has an incredible amount of charm, a great sense of visual style and a quirky wit that makes it a very enjoyable movie. If you are new to Almodovar, then this is the best film to introduce you to him. Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown is undeniably a grand landmark in Spanish film.
jpschapira
I don't think Pedro Almodóvar used to make better films than the ones he makes now; I believe he's always crafted very good movies. But maybe some elements or characteristics of his older pieces are not as present in his actual work, "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios" made me aware of this. For example, the day that the women of this film experience is unlikely to occur in an Almodóvar work today.Mostly I mean the level of craziness and the absurd. His last film, "Volver", finds a lot of women living 'at the verge of a nervous breakdown' (as the title of this movie translates in English), and although they are about to loose their minds at times, they don't find the same taxi driver three times when they stop a cab in different parts of a big city on a same day… That's delirious!But what's even more delirious is that Almodóvar's writing, with a perfect eye for understanding the female conscience, seems completely real but is cut off by situations like the one I've just mentioned; and that's a beautiful contrast. It's like watching a middle shot of Pepa (Carmen Maura) talking on the phone that suddenly changes to a close-up of her fast walking red high heels; it's like hearing things a woman in a difficult situation would think, but listening to the woman saying them out loud. I don't know if Almodóvar would want to explain what "Mujeres…" is about; maybe he'd prefer that you watch it without reading anything about it. I could just tell you it involves a woman (Pepa) having an affair with a man that left his sick wife and his nerdy son, who's involved with an ugly desperate woman that goes with him to visit an apartment to buy and the apartment is Pepa's, who at the moment is being visited by a girlfriend who's scared because her ex-boyfriend turned out to be a terrorist…Don't say that you would have preferred I hadn't told you anything.This is one of Almodóvar's first works, but don't forget this is the man who afterwards made semi-autobiographical pictures with risky images and character dramas with ruthless and pathetic characters. As a director, Almodóvar makes all his films look practically the same (the cinematography of the ever efficient Jose Luis Alcaine), although here the score is from a thrilling (Bernardo Bonezzi), before Alberto Iglesias started collaborating with Pedro. Which takes us to the differentiating factor in an Almodóvar film: the screenplay, in this movie as always highlighted by the classic credits "screenplay and direction". Better than anything else, we find Almodóvar the writer, capable of creating (in this piece) wonderful characters speaking all the same time in a small room where you can understand everything and you don't stop laughing.And therefore the performances shine; here by means of a unique and impossible to replace Carmen Maura, a beautifully over the top Julieta Serrano, a hilarious María Barranco and an unrecognizable Antonio Banderas, who shows here that he was probably something like an actor during a time of his life; Almodóvar allowed me to see that.
