'Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown

Again, we must discuss Pedro Almodovar's women.

As we've stated before on this blog, Almodovar's films all have an autobiolgraphical dimension to them and almost all of them have super strong female characters, often carrying the entire film and men are often just used as placeholders or mere cardboard cutouts.

His mother is often used in his film.

I suspect his mother is probably in every film. Along with aunts, cousins, grandparents, sisters and any female in his life that held any signficance.

I would also suspect that Women on the Verge contains bits and pieces of all of these women.

Pepa's the strong voice-over actress, yet she's still prone to falling for the sweet talk of an old cad unwilling to leave his wife or commit to anything. Candela is the vain, younger friend. Lucia's the wife. Paulina is the man's lawyer and new lover.

All of whom are seemingly controlled by the man, the cheater, the cad, Ivan. It's a constant struggled to get out from underneath this man's power over them, even if it is indirect.

What these women eventually learn is that love from a man for the sake of love from a man is never good enough. Finding a good man to treat you honestly like a decent human is by far the most important thing and there's little better when you can find that. But it's best to live without it altogether than to try with the wrong person.