Focus Features

Julieta Serrano in Women on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown

Pedro Almodóvar is probably the best-known contemporary European filmmaker, having received an Oscar in 2003 for Talk to Her. It's an incredible journey from his stance as an enfant terrible with his provocative films of the 80s – very much a response to the repression of the Franco years and the sense of liberation once the dictator was dead – to the almost-universal admiration and love in which he is now held.

His work has been strongly focused on female characters and the intensity of these films are a product of the intensity of his relationships with the actresses who have embodied these characters – a series of muses that begins with Carmen Maura and extends to Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and ultimately to Penélope Cruz.

In his early period there was also a male muse – Antonio Banderas – who he discovered and nurtured through six films into international stardom. Banderas was the first Spanish actor to become a Hollywood star for some time, and has been followed recently by Javier Bardem, who was in Almodóvar's Live Flesh.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was Almodóvar's breakout film propelling him into international acceptance.

In the following passages from his interview with Almodóvar, Frederic Strauss discusses aspects of the film:

Frederic Strauss: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown began as an adaptation of Cocteau's La Voix Humaine. This is surprising given the fact that the film is the purest of your comedies. And in formal terms it's also the most finished, one of the lightest.

Pedro Almodóvar: Yes, and it shows my lack of fidelity to my original idea. I start writing from an idea, but only by writing do I discover my true subject. I loved the scene in Law of Desire where the three women meet in the theater – and I adored Carmen in the film. So I decided to have an overdose of Carmen Maura. I wanted to work only with her and see how far we could go. La Voix Humaine seemed perfect because it was a monologue and I wanted to make a film with just one actress. But Cocteau's text only lasts 25 minutes, not long enough for a feature. So I decided to add on an hour which would tell the back-story of the same woman. My idea was to start 2 days before the famous phone call. When I reached the end of the 48 hours, I realized my script was much longer than I'd planned, that I had a great number of female characters and that Cocteau's La Voix Humaine had utterly disappeared from the text, apart from the original concept, of course: a woman sitting next to a suitcase full of memories waiting miserably for a phone call from the man she loves.

Frederic Strauss: The very bright colors of the sets are very Spanish, aren't they?

Pedro Almodóvar: Yes, they are, but they're hardly used in Spain. For me it's also a way of talking back to my past. Spanish culture is very baroque but in La Mancha, where I come from, it's terribly severe. The vitality of the colors is my way of fighting the austerity of my origins. My mother dressed in black almost her entire life. It's only in the last few years I've heard her say she'd like to wear a colored dress. Since she was three years old, she has been forced to wear mourning for various members of her family. My colors are my natural response to an enforced austerity I began to feel while I was still in my mother's womb. Because human nature possesses a natural capacity for resistance, my mother conceived a child who'd be able to counter all this blackness. I was born in La Mancha, but I grew up in the 60s and the pop explosion made a deep impression on me. I also seem to have an unconscious affinity for the colors of the Caribbean, as if I had a subconscious memory of the Spanish conquistadors who went to the new World, as if they were my distant ancestors. And don't forget Almodóvar is an Arab name.

Frederic Strauss: Women on the Verge... possesses qualities your other films don't always have. There's a formal virtuosity and a tightness of narrative which the energy of the mise en scene serves to accentuate. It's your most limpid film, but also the least complex and the least bizarre.

Pedro Almodóvar: The whole film breathes a kind of facility. Maybe this is because the script operates much more at face value than those of my other films. It's the film where one sees the least doubts. The thesis of the film, once Cocteau had disappeared, was to posit a feminine universe where everything is rosy, an idyllic town where everyone is nice, a universe that's totally humane. The only remaining problem in this earthly paradise is that men continue to leave women. It's the perfect starting point for a comedy: the taxi driver sings, he's like a guardian angel, the pharmacist is a wonderful woman. Obviously, it's all ironic because city life is nothing like this.

Essential Viewing: Pepi, Luci, Bom, What Have I Done to Deserve This? [Buy], Matador [Buy], Law of Desire [Buy], Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [Buy], Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! [Buy], High Heels, The Flower of My Secret [Buy], Live Flesh [Buy], All About My Mother [Buy], Talk To Her [Buy], Bad Education [Buy], Volver [Buy].

Extracts taken from Almodóvar on Almodóvar edited by Frederic Strauss (Faber & Faber, 2006).

Julieta Serrano in Women on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown

Pedro Almodóvar is probably the best-known contemporary European filmmaker, having received an Oscar in 2003 for Talk to Her. It's an incredible journey from his stance as an enfant terrible with his provocative films of the 80s – very much a response to the repression of the Franco years and the sense of liberation once the dictator was dead – to the almost-universal admiration and love in which he is now held.

His work has been strongly focused on female characters and the intensity of these films are a product of the intensity of his relationships with the actresses who have embodied these characters – a series of muses that begins with Carmen Maura and extends to Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and ultimately to Penélope Cruz.

In his early period there was also a male muse – Antonio Banderas – who he discovered and nurtured through six films into international stardom. Banderas was the first Spanish actor to become a Hollywood star for some time, and has been followed recently by Javier Bardem, who was in Almodóvar's Live Flesh.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was Almodóvar's breakout film propelling him into international acceptance.

In the following passages from his interview with Almodóvar, Frederic Strauss discusses aspects of the film:

Frederic Strauss: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown began as an adaptation of Cocteau's La Voix Humaine. This is surprising given the fact that the film is the purest of your comedies. And in formal terms it's also the most finished, one of the lightest.

Pedro Almodóvar: Yes, and it shows my lack of fidelity to my original idea. I start writing from an idea, but only by writing do I discover my true subject. I loved the scene in Law of Desire where the three women meet in the theater – and I adored Carmen in the film. So I decided to have an overdose of Carmen Maura. I wanted to work only with her and see how far we could go. La Voix Humaine seemed perfect because it was a monologue and I wanted to make a film with just one actress. But Cocteau's text only lasts 25 minutes, not long enough for a feature. So I decided to add on an hour which would tell the back-story of the same woman. My idea was to start 2 days before the famous phone call. When I reached the end of the 48 hours, I realized my script was much longer than I'd planned, that I had a great number of female characters and that Cocteau's La Voix Humaine had utterly disappeared from the text, apart from the original concept, of course: a woman sitting next to a suitcase full of memories waiting miserably for a phone call from the man she loves.

Frederic Strauss: The very bright colors of the sets are very Spanish, aren't they?

Pedro Almodóvar: Yes, they are, but they're hardly used in Spain. For me it's also a way of talking back to my past. Spanish culture is very baroque but in La Mancha, where I come from, it's terribly severe. The vitality of the colors is my way of fighting the austerity of my origins. My mother dressed in black almost her entire life. It's only in the last few years I've heard her say she'd like to wear a colored dress. Since she was three years old, she has been forced to wear mourning for various members of her family. My colors are my natural response to an enforced austerity I began to feel while I was still in my mother's womb. Because human nature possesses a natural capacity for resistance, my mother conceived a child who'd be able to counter all this blackness. I was born in La Mancha, but I grew up in the 60s and the pop explosion made a deep impression on me. I also seem to have an unconscious affinity for the colors of the Caribbean, as if I had a subconscious memory of the Spanish conquistadors who went to the new World, as if they were my distant ancestors. And don't forget Almodóvar is an Arab name.

Frederic Strauss: Women on the Verge... possesses qualities your other films don't always have. There's a formal virtuosity and a tightness of narrative which the energy of the mise en scene serves to accentuate. It's your most limpid film, but also the least complex and the least bizarre.

Pedro Almodóvar: The whole film breathes a kind of facility. Maybe this is because the script operates much more at face value than those of my other films. It's the film where one sees the least doubts. The thesis of the film, once Cocteau had disappeared, was to posit a feminine universe where everything is rosy, an idyllic town where everyone is nice, a universe that's totally humane. The only remaining problem in this earthly paradise is that men continue to leave women. It's the perfect starting point for a comedy: the taxi driver sings, he's like a guardian angel, the pharmacist is a wonderful woman. Obviously, it's all ironic because city life is nothing like this.

Essential Viewing: Pepi, Luci, Bom, What Have I Done to Deserve This? [Buy], Matador [Buy], Law of Desire [Buy], Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [Buy], Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! [Buy], High Heels, The Flower of My Secret [Buy], Live Flesh [Buy], All About My Mother [Buy], Talk To Her [Buy], Bad Education [Buy], Volver [Buy].

Extracts taken from Almodóvar on Almodóvar edited by Frederic Strauss (Faber & Faber, 2006).