“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” could be the title to a number of female-fronted comedies both old and new. “Bridesmaids” and “30 Rock” come to mind, but then so do “My Man Godfrey” or “The Awful Truth,” to an extent.
That’s because unlike men, who are often simply extremely irritated by a comic foil in such movies, women tend to display an utmost level of poise and steadfast resolve about how they are going to change their life right before it implodes.
Or at least that’s how they act in screwball comedies. Maybe that’s seen as a bad thing, but leave it to Pedro Almodovar to overcome the stereotype. Ever since “Women” he’s been making female fronted movies with as much color and surreal charm as is on display here.
Almodovar put himself on the world map when “Women” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had a Fellini-esque spirituality in its orchestral opening and unholy blend of colors. Arching crane shots and close ups put grand intensity behind the main character Pepa (Carmen Maura) and her lover Ivan (Fernando Guillen), two phony Spanish actors voice dubbing a trashy American romance. Ivan has left Pepa to return to his wife and leave on a trip, and Pepa will spend the movie desperately trying to get a hold of him one last time. What this will accomplish is unclear, but her motivation and drive to make it happen is what always counts.
In the process Pepa will set her bed on fire, stake out Ivan’s home, drug a woman looking to buy her apartment, throw a telephone out her window and be chased by Ivan’s gun-toting wife. At the same time, her friend is afraid that she’s slept with a terrorist and that the police are now following and incriminating her. That fact never seems to faze Pepa, which only goes to show how focused on the task at hand she is. Is that selfish? Undoubtedly, even sadistic on Pepa’s part, but in her world on her mission, it’s impossible to lose sight.
Almodovar never directly plays the film for laughs, and yet the film is perfectly madcap. Pepa’s demeanor shows not a woman playing the fool but one doing everything she can to make things right while getting everything wrong. Part of that has to do with Almodovar’s strict effort to keep the focus on her. We get shots of Pepa from inside the answering machine and from TV commercials in which she advertises a laundry detergent strong enough to get murder blood stains out. Almodovar makes Pepa his muse, as he has continued to do throughout his films, and he resists the urge to make the film too much about any other character, despite their scores of problems and stories of intrigue. Even Antonio Banderas playing the nerdy, yet adulterous boyfriend while his girlfriend is passed out and drugged cannot quite stand apart from Pepa’s destructive glow.
You can see part of Pepa’s charm in “Volver” and “The Skin I Live In,” and Almodovar has now returned to his colors and his zaniness for his latest comedy “I’m So Excited.” “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” may sometimes be a mess, but it’s the strong focus of a master.
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