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Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (1988)
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Though the kinky characters and aberrant social behavior common to the works of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar are very evident in his Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the film is at base a door-slamming farce in the grand tradition. The tiny apartment of pregnant actress Carmen Maura is the "Grand Central Station" setpiece for this dizzying tale. Distraught over her recent breakup with her lover, Carmen prepares to overdose on sleeping pills, which she blends into a gazpacho so they'll go down easier. She is diverted from her suicide by her best friend Maria Barranco, a fugitive from justice (her boy friend is a Shi'Ite terrorist) who needs a place to stay. Later, when Carmen's apartment is empty, her ex-lover's grown son (Antonio Banderas) comes to the apartment with his wife (Rossy de Palma) in answer to Carmen's "room to let" newspaper ad. The wife inadvertently ingests Carmen's "pill sauce", and as she blissfully snoozes, the husband inaugurates an affair with Carmen's friend Barranco. The plot convolutions come thick and fast before the payoff scene, wherein Carmen, no longer dependent on male companionship to define her life, ends up in a relationship with the just-awakened wife!
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