Sunday Schmooze
Hosted by Fred Craden
Pedro Almodóvar’s
WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
Sunday, May 21st
Bagels at 10 AM | Film at 11 AM
Members $15 | Public $20
High atop one of Spain’s most posh penthouses, three women
have come to the end of their mental ropes. Pepa (repeat Almodóvar collaborator
Carmen Maura) has resolved to kill
herself by downing a batch of gazpacho laced with sleeping pills as she
obsesses over Iván, the lover who just jilted her over the answering machine — and
that’s just the start of the orgy of unhinged behavior that makes up Pedro
Almodóvar’s gaudy, cheeky screwball melodrama. Her neurotic best friend
Candela is seeking refuge at Pepa’s place because she recently realized her
lover is a Shiite terrorist. And Iván's ex-wife Lucía was just released from a
20-year stint in a mental institution. They’re all mighty mad, and one of them
is about to commit murder unless the other half-crazed femmes fatales can
figure out a way to prevent her murderous breakdown. Almodóvar creates an
over-the-top, off-kilter universe of madness, mayhem, and pure fun. Film critic
Pauline Kael heralded Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as “one
of the jauntiest of all war-of-the-sexes comedies.” This celebration
of emotional excess had all the makings of an obscure cult classic, yet
improbably became the highest-grossing Spanish film of all time upon release,
and did its part in putting co-star Antonio Banderas on the
international stage. (Spain, 1988,
88min., In Spanish with English subtitles, R | Dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
