Melding melodrama with screwball farce, this Academy Award–nominated black comedy was Pedro Almodóvar’s international breakthrough and secured his place at the vanguard of modern Spanish cinema. Continuing the auteur’s exploration of the female psyche, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown tells the story of Pepa—played by the director’s frequent collaborator Carmen Maura—who resolves to kill herself with a batch of sleeping-pill-laced gazpacho after her lover leaves her. Fortunately, she is interrupted by a deliciously chaotic series of events. The filmmaker channeled Hollywood inspiration into his own unique vision, arriving at the irreverent humor and vibrant visual sense that define his work today. With an exceptional ensemble cast that also includes Antonio Banderas and Rossy de Palma, this film shows an artist in total control of his craft.

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Loosely based upon a play by Jean Cocteau, and by Almodóvar considered his key film, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" demonstrates many of the future elements of his oeuvre, here especially hysterically women.

The story begins with Pepa (Carmen Maura), distraught my her break-up with her boyfriend, prepares her suicide by gazpacho with sleeping pills, as she is saved by her best friend, who is on the run, only later to have her ex-lovers grown up son's fiancée falling asleep, because she ate of the gazpacho and him having an affair with her best friend.

When Almodóvar talks about it as his key film, it may be because we here find motifs later explores in especially "Live Flesh" and "All about my Mother", but also here he hits the tone of this flamboyant often campy colorful mise-en-scene, where he pays homage to his many influences, as for instance Salvatore Dali.

Henrik Sylow