Just moments before Gloria had gone upstairs, Antonio had been getting ready to visit an old lover. As Gloria and Cristal return to their apartments, reluctantly leaving Juani to reprimand her daughter Vanessa, they suddenly find Antonio dead in the kitchen. The film itself is typical of Almodóvar’s morbid peculiarities and implausible plot twists. In this scene, we see the women also implicated in the socialization of their daughters in their image, despite their own frustrations with their lives. The neighbor, Cristal (Verónica Forqué) warns Juani that she might traumatize her daughter. Juani’s response is that she is also traumatized as a mother and housewife, and that if she has the strength to take it, why not her daughter-an allusion to the apparently abusive relationship between Juani and her now dead husband. In one scene, we see them both in the kitchen as the mother, Juani (Kiti Manver), is forcing her daughter, Vanessa (Sonia Anabela Holimann), to do housework, telling her that if she moves from the dishwasher, she will smash her against the wall. Meanwhile, a young girl lives next door with her austere, widowed mother. In turn, Gloria is visibly anxious and angry at her position, popping pills and casting heated emotions that the stereotypical 1950s American housewife would never have dreamed to emit. He thinks it “indecent” for a woman to venture outside of the private domain for work, a set of values that don’t correlate to his current class or decade. Not only is she relegated to the job of taking care of the home and family, but she also works as a cleaning lady to supplement her husband’s meager salary as a taxi driver-a point for which Antonio is spiteful. Whenever I ask this question, the response is usually, “But what about ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (1984, What did I do to Deserve This)? Four years before Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, Almodóvar directed a film about an unhappy housewife, Gloria (Carmen Maura) who finally kills her demanding and mentally abusive husband, Antonio (Ángel de Andrés López).
Yet, his reputation as a queer director with a penchant for creating strong, female protagonists has led us astray of the real question: “Is Almodóvar really a feminist?” That year, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and won Best Film at the Spanish Goya Awards. In 1988, his film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios ( Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown) propelled him into international acclaim, bringing actor Antonio Banderas with him. They had never experienced the protests of 1968 like much of the world, and Almodóvar offered colorful, alternative discourse to Spanish film and the society at large. He was part of the post-Franco countercultural revolution in Madrid, La Movida-after decades of a repressive dictatorship imposed on Spain by Francisco Franco, the 80s were a time for the country to catch up. Yet, I didn’t want to give up on the Spanish director.
Is Pedro Almodóvar really a “women’s director” as he is so often dubbed? I’ve been doubtful for a while. Pedro Almodóvar's "What Did I Do to Deserve?"
0 kommentar(er)
