Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

1988's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN is such a perfect farce it is easy to understand its classic status, and why it was later adapted into a stage musical. This is a riotously funny good time.  Pedro Almodovar has written and directed a zany, slightly dark door slamming ode to the messiness of love affairs with a real sense of the madcap, and with an art director's (extremely vivid) eye.  That eye never misses a comic beat, but wavers enough to distract us with, say, a striking deck umbrella or window decal. Or multiple pairs of high heels and sneakers.  It is all part of the show.

Pepa (Carmen Maura) is a T.V. soap star in Madrid whose life is beginning to resemble her art.  Her older, married lover Ivan (Fernandon Guillen) has just broken up with her over a series of answering machine messages.  He can't even do it in person, going so far as to requesting she leave his suitcase downstairs with the bellman.  The spineless lout! We get a lovely introduction to Ivan in a brilliantly funny early sequence as he walks past a wide assortment of female admirers; with each he uses a romantic cliche in the same silky voice he uses to dub American films into Spanish.  Pepa is distraught, popping sleeping pills and setting her bed of illicit activity on fire (while hilariously melodramatic music fills the soundtrack).

Her busy answering machine also has messages of despair from another woman on the verge - Candela (Maria Barranco), who has her own romantic dilemma that quite unfortunately involves Shiite terrorists.  And Ivan's, wife, Lucia (Julietta Serrano)? She too is on the verge, insanely jealous of Pepa but little dreaming her beloved is planning to fly to Sweden with yet another lover! She will, armed with two guns, eventually infiltrate Pepa's apartment, where her son Calos (Antonio Banderas) and his snooty fiancee, Marisa (Rossy de Palma) have quite coincidentally been spending the afternoon during their apartment hunt.  Some barbituate spiked gazpacho, a group of animals in twos (think Noah's ark), a suicide attempt, and multiple items thrown out the window will add to the melange.

Everyone's timing is right on.  Jose Salcedo's editing is oddly effective.  Each situation is given time to develop and nicely overlap with others. It's not a gag a minute, but rather more deliberate in its building of comic scenarios.  Familiar yet utterly original.  You may be frustrated by a gaggle of unresolved story threads by the end but if you go with the funky groove of WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN you'll hardly worry about such trivia.