Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

ThiefHott Too much of everything

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

gentendo 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.

lastliberal With the Toronto Film Festival going on this weekend, it is appropriate that this is my second venture into Pedro Almodóvar's films, as it won the People's Choice Award at that festival in 1989.Almodóvar wrote and directed this very funny film that is a far cry from Matador. Antonio Banderas is back, this time with a Lyle Lovette haircut, as the son of a philandering husband (Fernando Guillén), who also cheats on his girlfriends.Carmen Maura (Volver0 leads a superb cast as the girlfriend that just got dumped. She is hilarious as she appears to be losing it. In comes her girlfriend (María Barranco), who is afraid of being arrested for harboring Shiite terrorists (this is 1998!). Add Banderas and his mother to the mix, and you have one laugh after another.It even had a great line reminiscent of "A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.":Ana (Ana Leza, who was married to Banderas before Melanie Griffith came along): I'm fed up. I'm gonna get myself some quick cash, buy myself his bike and split. With a bike, who needs a man? Pepa (Carmen Maura): Learning mechanics is easier than learning male psychology. You can figure out a bike, but you can never figure out a man.It is almost misogynistic to say the movie was very funny as all the women were hysterical, but it was.

oazal I am a huge fun of Almodovar and Women... was the last out of all his movies I saw - I have seen all of them now. I am very happy that this one was the last as if it was first I wouldn't go any further. Early Almodovar, very square and obvious and so annoying that I couldn't get through all of this movie. Characters supposedly perfectly created - were absolutely unbearable - something too much and something else missing.At some point I developed feeling of compassion towards men in this movie. Cant believe that Almodovar was accused of being feminist after making Women.. I am very happy that later movies were better and I am looking forward to his new production to get rid of the bad taste after Women.... P.S. I am not American:)

nycritic MUJERES AL BORDE DE UN ATAQUE DE NERVIOS is, from its classic opening title sequence in which Lola Beltran belts out her powerhouse ranchera ballad "Soy infeliz" to a montage of pictures taken from women's fashion catalogues to its appropriate closing with La Lupe (a gay icon herself in Latin America) singing her diatribe, "Puro Teatro", a perfect parenthesis that encapsulates a gay man's wet dream: the assortment of strong femininity, filmed to the beat of a potboiler, seen through the eyes of Douglas Sirk, and the heart and essence of farce taken to its limits. Seeing Almodovar's comedic masterpiece is not enough: it has to be savored like the fine wine it's become as it approaches its twentieth year from when it first exploded into theatres and rocked Spanish cinema to its core. Quite frankly, this is the greatest screwball comedy ever filmed, and for a genre created in the United States, this one trumps even Preston Sturges in sheer craziness that just builds upon momentum until it veers out of control.As a matter of fact, television audiences who follow the satirical "Desperate Housewives" should make an effort to see Almodovar's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN and appreciate the genius run amok during the approximate 90 minutes it takes to tell its frantic story. It's the only real way to appreciate what goes on ABC's hit show. From the moment our heroine, Pepa (Carmen Maura, in a role that has defined her career) awakens from her slumber and frantically runs to the phone to get that hungrily awaited phone call from Ivan (Fernando Guillen) who has abandoned her and faints in the middle of dubbing Joan Crawford as Vienna in JOHNNY GUITAR, as she crosses paths with the scared Candela (Maria Barranco), the lunatic Lucia (Julietta Serrano), anal Marisa (Rossy de Palma), and feminist Paulina (Kiti Manver) during the course of two days, we're in the same league as the five women of "Housewives." They might even serve as parenthetical bookmarks due to the twin nature of women in the throes of despair pushed to the extreme. This is, as a matter of fact, what THE WOMEN would have looked like had it been filmed fifty years later. Less stagy than Cukor's film but no less effective even when it pokes good fun at artifice, camp, and itself, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN is smart, witty, ferociously funny and oddly touching -- a tough thing to do in comedies. It marked the movie which brought Pedro Almodovar to international fame, such that MATADOR was re-released in order to bring its equally bizarre story to the public who had discovered a wunderkind in the avant-garde director. For years, plans for an American remake floated about and actresses names were on a continuous shuffle. Thankfully, the idea has not come through and audiences can enjoy this very Spanish, very quirky movie in its original form and see why the term "Almodovarian" exists in cinema today. This is what started it all, proper.