By:
Kimberly
Kimberly
This is just a guesstimate, but I'm certain that about 99.99% of all cinephiles have that go-to movie to watch upon feeling lovesick, unstable, or, as Mexican singer Lola Beltrán warbles in one of her painfully exquisite ballads, infeliz (unhappy.) For most red-blooded American women born after 1968 or so, that movie has been one of the John Hughes variety (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, blah blah blah.) While I'm unashamedly guilty of eating a bag of popcorn in bed and watching only the scenes that contain Duckie, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a large part of me that identified with Pepa from Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Yes, I know, it's a foreign film. The fact that I'm even writing an entire article on some hot-shot "furn" director in my debut post is enough to get some eyes rolling and some voices muttering, "pretentious." But after watching this film several times over the past four or so years, it still amazes me the lack of recognition and popularity it has gained, despite its inclusion in the Viva Pedro DVD box set and a number of other reasons I will get to - but I musn't get too ahead of myself.
Set amongst the background of a brightly-colored, bustling Madrid, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (WOTV) tells the story of Pepa, a television actress and voice-dubber desperately trying to contact her estranged (and married) lover and co-worker Iván before he sets off for Stockholm. Her attempts, however, are continually thwarted by Iván's wife and Pepa's distraught supermodel friend Candela, who seeks help from Pepa after realizing that she has become romantically involved with a wanted Shiite terrorist. Coincidentally, as she is also in the process of hopefully renting out her penthouse apartment, Iván's son and his fiancé visit the place as prospective residents. All of these appear to be distractions and roadblocks preventing Pepa from getting to Iván, but the (supposedly) feminist lawyer whom Pepa seeks to defend Candela happens to be - *gasp* - Iván's new lover!
While Almodóvar is known for cleverly switching the genre of a film without the audience realizing the shift*, WOTV seems to consistently be two genres at once. "It's a comedy, but no one is laughing," quips the narrator in the English-language trailer. It is a comedy, but not so much so that we don't become detached from Pepa, making her a punching bag for which to relieve our romantic fallouts. (That's pretty much Decent Screenwriting 101, but I can appreciate and point out the small accomplishments to make my argument, can't I?)
Another thing Almodóvar is known for is his familiarity and understanding of the wild and wonderful World of Women. With a majority of his oeuvre containing films centered around female characters, his insatiable fascination is undeniable. He admits that he doesn't quite know where his interest stems from, but the important part is that it's apparent, and that, as a member of the female sex, I happen to think he's right on the button when it comes to sympathetically and understandably portraying Pepa's distress.
For a large part of the film, Pepa struggles to remain emotionally, mentally, and, at times, physically stable. In order to sleep at night, she takes barbiturates and misses a dubbing session with Iván, who, of course, she's been trying to contact since their break-up. She faints, calls his home and curses out his wife, wanders the city at night searching for him, tosses a telephone out the window, and accidentally sets the bed she and Iván shared on fire, despite her prospects of renting out the apartment as soon as possible. We watch her as she weeps, mopes, and stuffs Iván's remaining possessions and silly gifts into a suitcase. "Soy infeliz", the Lola Beltrán song mentioned above, is the gut-wrenching theme to Pepa's unhappiness, and plays during the opening credits.
But there comes a point in Pepa's hysteric state of being (which comes before the bed fire) when she decides to face her problems head on, whether on the verge of a nervous breakdown or not (and, hell, she has every right to be.) "I'm sick of being good," she proclaims, as she chucks a handful of sleeping pills into a blender of gazpacho. When I'm fed up with something, I often repeat this line to myself in the original Spanish: Estoy harta de ser buena. (It's quite therapeutic - I highly recommend doing it.)
Like most of you probably reading this, I've been through my fair share of heartbreaks and romantic torments. While I may not have stood outside an ex-lover's apartment at night, hurled a rotary telephone out the window of a swank penthouse apartment I'm hoping to sublet, or felt the need to take sleeping pills in order to get some shut-eye, I wouldn't blame Pepa for doing it. Also, it's just so cathartic to watch Pepa go to the lengths that we only wish we had to guts to go to. In this sense, Almodóvar seems to have tapped into this desire that I, at least, can relate to. As the auteur so insightfully says, "Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness." (via) In the case of WOTV, he certainly has done that, using his understanding and interest of the World of Women to make a film that allows us to cheer on and sympathize with a character who, in any other film, would likely be portrayed as a "crazy ex-girlfriend" - an all-too-common and extremely condescending theme in most movies.
I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. -Pedro Almodóvar (via)
Another thing Almodóvar is known for is his familiarity and understanding of the wild and wonderful World of Women. With a majority of his oeuvre containing films centered around female characters, his insatiable fascination is undeniable. He admits that he doesn't quite know where his interest stems from, but the important part is that it's apparent, and that, as a member of the female sex, I happen to think he's right on the button when it comes to sympathetically and understandably portraying Pepa's distress.
For a large part of the film, Pepa struggles to remain emotionally, mentally, and, at times, physically stable. In order to sleep at night, she takes barbiturates and misses a dubbing session with Iván, who, of course, she's been trying to contact since their break-up. She faints, calls his home and curses out his wife, wanders the city at night searching for him, tosses a telephone out the window, and accidentally sets the bed she and Iván shared on fire, despite her prospects of renting out the apartment as soon as possible. We watch her as she weeps, mopes, and stuffs Iván's remaining possessions and silly gifts into a suitcase. "Soy infeliz", the Lola Beltrán song mentioned above, is the gut-wrenching theme to Pepa's unhappiness, and plays during the opening credits.
But there comes a point in Pepa's hysteric state of being (which comes before the bed fire) when she decides to face her problems head on, whether on the verge of a nervous breakdown or not (and, hell, she has every right to be.) "I'm sick of being good," she proclaims, as she chucks a handful of sleeping pills into a blender of gazpacho. When I'm fed up with something, I often repeat this line to myself in the original Spanish: Estoy harta de ser buena. (It's quite therapeutic - I highly recommend doing it.)
Like most of you probably reading this, I've been through my fair share of heartbreaks and romantic torments. While I may not have stood outside an ex-lover's apartment at night, hurled a rotary telephone out the window of a swank penthouse apartment I'm hoping to sublet, or felt the need to take sleeping pills in order to get some shut-eye, I wouldn't blame Pepa for doing it. Also, it's just so cathartic to watch Pepa go to the lengths that we only wish we had to guts to go to. In this sense, Almodóvar seems to have tapped into this desire that I, at least, can relate to. As the auteur so insightfully says, "Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness." (via) In the case of WOTV, he certainly has done that, using his understanding and interest of the World of Women to make a film that allows us to cheer on and sympathize with a character who, in any other film, would likely be portrayed as a "crazy ex-girlfriend" - an all-too-common and extremely condescending theme in most movies.
After all, life is both a comedy and a drama - especially when it comes to breaking up with douche bags who most likely don't deserve us anyway. (We can surely agree on that, right?) Almodóvar just chooses to represent it as it is - both, while using that signature bright color palette to accurately depict those burning emotions one gets as s/he suffers a break-up/rejection/any other romantic failure. And it's this representation of life, of desperation and lovesickness, that makes me slip this DVD into the player whenever something major-ly shitty happens in my so-called love life and makes wonder why I feel like the only 20-year-old American college student who has seen this movie and cherishes it like any Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink.
SO WHY AREN'T ANY OF YOU PATHETIC, LONELY PEOPLE WATCHING IT?!
*Watch Volver (2006) and try to keep track of when these genre-switching points occur.
SO WHY AREN'T ANY OF YOU PATHETIC, LONELY PEOPLE WATCHING IT?!
*Watch Volver (2006) and try to keep track of when these genre-switching points occur.
No comments:
Post a Comment