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What Have I Done to Deserve This?
A henpecked housewife ekes out a meager existence, surrounded by a host of colorful characters: her ungrateful husband, her delinquent sons, her headstrong mother-in-law, and her sex worker neighbor, among others.
Release : | 1984 |
Rating : | 7.1 |
Studio : | Kaktus Producciones Cinematográficas, Tesauro, |
Crew : | Set Decoration, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | Carmen Maura Luis Hostalot Ángel de Andrés López Gonzalo Suárez Verónica Forqué |
Genre : | Drama Comedy |
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I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Almodóvar's fourth feature, blatantly shows a full-frontal man in the opening sex scene, its shock value aptly sets the harbinger of what viewers are expected to see: a hodgepodge of flawed characters.Among them are a home-working prostitute and her clients, one of which is an exhibitionist and another one is a struggling writer, with a kleptomaniac wife and an alcoholic shrink brother, a suicidal over-the-hill German singer, a telepathic kid and her disgruntled single mother, an impotent cop, a stingy mother-in-law, an abusive husband who is good at forging signatures, a teenage drug-dealer and an his even younger gay gigolo brother and a lizard named Money. Those are the rank and file surrounding our protagonist Gloria (Maura), an ordinary housewife who moonlights as a cleaning lady, living in a minute apartment with her husband Antonio (López), a taxi driver, her mother-in-law Abuela (Lampreave) and two sons in Madrid.A life of toil, Gloria gets neither love nor money from Antonio, who is possessed with a former German singer Ingrid (Loritz) in Berlin, for whom he worked as a chauffeur; her two sons have already gone awry in their life paths, Almodóvar really stretches out on a limb to let a mother give up her teenage son to the adoption of a lecherous dentist (nudge nudge); her only friend is the fille de joie neighbour Cristal (Forqué), from whom her horizon of sex perversion has been widely broadened. Yet, this friendship is prohibited from Antonio, whose double-standard is the epitome of male chauvinism, which is often the target in Almodóvar's works, and the marital dispute will heat up to a murder on the spur of the moment, however, things seem to be back on track for Gloria afterwards.Almodóvar's gaudy aesthetics has already gone full-blown in this creative dark comedy, and his script goes to great length to make the story whole, although this time even himself cannot make ends meet in this slightly meandering menagerie of wackos.His sympathy towards women is unmistakably tangible, and Carmen Maura is the perfect emblem of a woman who seethes with a cocktail of negative emotions: disaffection, irritation, frustration, depression and sorrow, but at the same time, represents strength, mettle and hope as if nothing can destroy her whatsoever. Verónica Forqué is a hoot to watch with her gum-exhibiting naivety as the golden-hearted working girl, and Chus Lampreave is always a go-to focus of attention in Almodóvar's universe. Whimsical and audacious, Almodóvar's fourth film is a terrific mess and to a great extent, shows his true grit in grain as a young and gifted filmmaker.
I love Pedro Almodovar. He is a marvelous, fun, uninhibited filmmaker who has made so many great films, including "Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "Volver," "All About My Mother," "Broken Embraces," and others.This is an offbeat film about dysfunction like you've never seen it. OMG. Carmen Maura plays Gloria, who is addicted to No-Doz and works as a maid in Madrid. She's married to a jerk who drives a taxi and is a forger. He's crazy over a German singer, his former employer.The couple has two sons. One is a gay hustler, and the other sells drugs.Her mother-in-law lives with them, a woman who is constantly trying to obtain food as if it's gold and then sells it to the family.Now they have a good chance at some big money, when Gloria's husband has a chance to forge Hitler's memoirs and have his old employer pretend to be the owner. Gloria also gives her hustler son to her dentist. You read that right. Gloria's best friend is her neighbor, the hilarious Cristal, a call girl who wants to go to Vegas. Her other neighbor has a young child that she's awful to, at least verbally, but the child has magic powers.I did say it was off the wall.In the midst of all this, there is drama and poignancy of a woman doing anything she can to survive in the city during Franco's regime.Someone said that the way Almodovar sets things up, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. But if you do both, there may just be a solution.You have to take Almodovar as he is - wild, funny, with a message about humanity there. This film is outrageous. I loved it.
Being a Spaniard, when you listen to Pedro talking, you realize he can't help being constantly comical, even though he tried to be serious about any matter. But one knows for sure he is always concerned about social, religious and political issues, putting himself always in favor of those marginal, poor, alternative, or simply average, on its last legs. THIS is the case of Gloria's story, the modest and invisible woman cleaning your apartment who never shared a word about herself. PEDRO is proud of this film, because it set a point of very beginning in his career, leaving behind some successful punky jokes and presents his work with ambition. He will show from now on his fondness for Hollywood, for Douglas Sirk melodramas, also for ancient south American boleros lyrics, brought to life. He never gave up being comical, of course, but now is not the end of it all.(I never compare "Qué he hecho yo " with "Volver", although some plot lines are very similar, you could put all together into the particular universe of the author, while Raimunda is a very ardent portrait of a colorful, brave and beautiful mother, Gloria is a weak invisible woman snowed under some universe plan against her. This is Almodovar's canon: He is trying to get every person watching his movies knowing NOT what to do, if cry or laugh or mix together in an awkward feeling, stimulating therefore some brainstorm into him or better: to her. (Pedro talks to women and talks about women, men can watch.) He shows tragedy, and then finds some funny side of it all, and makes you feel awful for being laughing at some silly thing that happened in the middle of disaster, and then drama flows again. Only women tend to be so complex to do that. Men are dull and emotionally uninteresting. So NO, this is not a Comedy. It is a funny Tragedy.Almodovar's eyes always remain amazed at this world of fools, where crazy circumstances and coincidences seem to happen together against you.Look into your maid's life. Yes, she may hide a fantastic story. Talk to her.
I don't think I spoil anything, but I am just covering myself here...The true value in this movie lies in watching it twice. Almodovar re-inscribes Italian Neorealism from the 1950s in the Spain post-Franco. The neorealist shots of el barrio on the ring road surrounding Madrid are symbolic, as is the lizard, the grandmother, and the song on the television. With a background of Spain during the Franco years, one can appreciate this film much more. There are also deeply surreal moments, which give the viewer a voyeuristic sensation of watching "cinema within cinema." The presence of Germany is also wide open to interpretation, as it could mean Spain's classic philosophical problem of "la Espana invertebrada" and never having the "eye," or the intellectual advancement, that the Germans had. This movie also touches on the issue of Rural/City which was so prevalent after Franco's time, where the city had come to be associated with corruption. One asks, at the end of the film, if maybe the city is not as giving of opportunity as the optimistic Spaniards would like to think. Or is it?