Watch Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown For Free

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I can understand what this whole movie is going for, the bare camera shots, the excessive colors and the excessive drama. It all seems like it could be quite fun, when looked from aback. Unfortunately the glue that would tie this all together is the wit, and there is obviously a good amount of wit, unfortunately its not particularly interesting in English subs, much of the conversations come off as trying too hard to be funny. This is just how I feel about it, and I think there is a good chance the issue is that i'm not a native language speaker. The worst I can say about a movie is that its boring, unfortunately this approaches that description, I am however leaving some leeway because I think it is my own fault for not speaking native Spanish.

The title released Almodóvar name worldwide, today remains one of his most acclaimed films. After directing some of their stories underground as "Laberinto de pasiones" (1982) o "Entre tinieblas" (1983), Almodovar line again ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (1984), a type of comedy of manners with good scripts, and full of great intrepretaciones scenes that verge on surrealism. The actress Carmen Maura and Maria Barranco are the best in the film, though we must not forget the roles to Julieta Serrano and Fernando Guillen-Cuervo. This title is highly recommended for fans who want to view and retrieve the kitsch/pop Almodovar, the most colorful and most natural to tell stories.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a chaotic screwball comedy that examines the nature of gender: its roles, implications, consequences, and cultural stereotypes. Specifically, the theme of the film seems to demonize the machismo mentality of womanizers. In contrast, it succors the women who fall prey to the pseudo-charms of womanizers.From the very beginning, we are introduced to Ivan: a man with an attractive yet evasive personality. He is seen walking alongside a group of women, wooing them with trite compliments in what appears to be a television commercial, or pseudo-dream-world. This scene is very aware of itself: it's an expository and visual catalogue that sets up not only the quality of Ivan's non-committal character, but also establishes a tone that looks down upon the men of the world who "play" women. Ironically, the film is directed by a male: Pedro Almodóvar. I felt as though he was trying to explore the reasons behind women's emotionally nebulous states of mind; not in a way that criticized women for being so confusing to men, but rather in a way that was criticizing men for being so immoral to women. He took the male stereotype of manliness, exaggerated it within the character of Ivan, and then sought to examine the harmful consequences of what Ivan-like personalities can cause upon naïve, sensitive women. In other words, Almodóvar seems to suggest that men view women as crazy because they are unable to view themselves as behaving immorally towards them. Though the argument can hold true from the opposite perspective, I think Almodóvar was fair to place men in the negative light: it acting as a critique upon his own manliness rather than pointing the blame upon women. Since he's a man, he can't really be accused of being chauvinistic.The women in the film are having, as the title suggests, nervous breakdowns due to immoral men— two of which whose lives are negatively affected by Ivan's womanizing (Pepa and lunatic Lucia). Pepa's and Lucia's maudlin behavior consequently affects (for worst) the lives of those around them. For example, Pepa wasn't being charitable towards her suicidal friend, Candela, because she was too wrapped up in her own agitated mind concerning Ivan. These women are shown doing absurd things in order to justify their hurt feelings from poor relationships: burning beds, overdosing on sleeping pills, attempting suicide, holding each other at gun point, etc. As I questioned why they were doing all of these crazy things, my mind always came back to the same answer: all of their behavior was a reaction to a man's infidelity and non-commitment.Granted that the women in the story had freewill and did not have to react so irrationally, it didn't help much that their emotions were being toyed with by ambivalent men. A more refined theme can now be extracted from the film: poor relationships spring from poor morality, and poor morality comes because of greed. Consider Antonio Bandera's character. He's in a relationship with a somewhat controlling woman, who, when she gets drugged up, he leaves her for Candela because she's new, fresh. This idea plays off the difficulty of transient relationships: they start of fiery and passionate, but blow out too soon because of boredom and non-commitment. When given the chance to behave immorally, Bandera's character leaps at the chance. He selfishly desires the feelings of love, but not the work it takes to establish a real loving and lasting relationship.Almodóvar exaggerates the film aesthetic-look to help convey these themes. Pastel colored walls, flamboyant costumes/dress, extensive set-design of plants, and over-the-top acting/stunts creates an atmosphere of hyper-stress and confusion. All these elements act as outward physical manifestations of the inner-turmoil he's trying to express regarding male-female relationships. Relationships are chaotic and screwball. They often create stress and confusion. In "normal" relationships outside the movies, the tensions that Almodóvar presents in his film regarding male and females are often experienced in more subtle ways. Instead of committing suicide over troubled relationships, we might gossip with the person next to us as to why we don't like whomever (though, indeed, many suicides have resulted from poor relationships). Almodóvar merely exaggerates common problems existent in these types of relationships in order to provoke how we feel inside when being tortured by a man or woman. In context of the movie, though, I feel that women will identify this film as a work of justice; one that slams upon men who ought to know better. For men, this film is a learning tool of why not to give mixed signals, let alone behave immorally—by doing so they only confuse the female species even further. I wonder what this film would have been like if directed by a woman: I'll assume the opposite would hold true of degrading women rather than men.

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.