I thought this only happened in the movies ✵ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown - ANGELS AND MONSTERS ✵ 1975–1991 - The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

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IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Comedy drama

DIRECTOR

Pedro Almodóvar

WRITER

Pedro Almodóvar

STARS

Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, María Barranco

BEFORE

1980 Almodóvar makes his ultra low-budget, playfully outrageous debut with Pepi, Luci, Bom, and Other Girls Like Mom.

AFTER

1999 All About My Mother, one of Almodóvar’s best, brings all his themes to the boil.

2002 Almodóvar’s Talk to Her is a controversial, highly charged romantic thriller about two men caring for two women, both of whom are in a coma.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios) is the story of Pepa (Carmen Maura), a Spanish actress who dubs the voices of US movies with her faithless boyfriend, Iván (Fernando Guillén). Their relationship is not so much a love story as a door-slamming farce.

Panic attack

It’s perhaps appropriate that the meaning of the movie’s title gets lost in translation. The ataques de nervios of the Spanish title refers to a panic attack, a state of breathlessness that director Pedro Almodóvar sustains at a madcap pace inspired by the Hollywood “screwball” comedies of the 1940s. It looks to the past, but the movie’s comedy is also thrillingly contemporary. Post-Franco Madrid is the perfect setting for its manic farce, with Almódovar whipping up subplots involving Arab terrorists, dance-crazy cab drivers, and soup spiked with sleeping pills. Yet the boisterous stuff is shot through with the director’s trademark sense of humanity.

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At Pepa’s apartment, a suicidal Candela (María Barranco) is distracted by Carlos (Antonio Banderas).

What else to watch: Matador (1986) ✵ Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) ✵ High Heels (1991) ✵ Live Flesh (1997) ✵ Volver (2006) ✵ The Skin I Live In (2011)