Assertive "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown"

In Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 film, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," several of his characters don’t fit into traditional gender roles, especially the women.  His women are emotional, but not entirely passive.  His female characters assert a certain power that allow them to be more dominant in certain scenes, and Almodovar’s use of a campy aesthetic blends into scenes that flip gender roles in the film’s many topsy-turvy situations.  In "A History of Narrative Film," David A. Cook states, “A third and definitive phase of New Spanish Cinema can be distinguished in the period from 1973 through the present.  When Franco’s handpicked successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated…the nation’s movement toward non-Falangist normalization was virtually assured,” (579).  This was a turning point because when Franco assigned a new cabinet in 1969 and replaced Maunel Fraga Iribarne with the right-wing Alfredo Sanchez Bella as the new Minister of Information, the national Film School was closed from 1970-1995.  But, at the end of 1977, censorship was gone, and as Spain’s economy became more connected with the rest of Europe and the world, there were new channels for film distribution for the latest generation of directors who had been educated at the National Film School.

One in scene in particular that exemplifies Almodovar’s campiness is the climactic scene when the two cops show up at Pepa’s apartment.  At the beginning, Lucia appears with the cops with an over-the-top costume consisting of a pink suit jacket and skirt, complete with a high hairdo and very noticeably artificial eyelashes.  Her first appearance sets a comical tone for this serious situation.  As Pepa is the heroine of the film, she constantly takes charge of any problems that she and her friends get into.  Pepa wears a lot of red, including in her shirt, skirt, blazer, earrings and nail polish, and this color exhorts her control and dominance of the sequence, highlighted further when her friend, Candela, whispers to Carlos, “Pepa’s some talker!” as Pepa explains their story to the police.  Pepa exhibits a male-hero type of assurance in her calm and firm exterior.  There is a balance of power between male and female that is shown, in that Pepa and the main cop are both wearing professional-looking clothing.  Also, as Pepa, Lucia, and the two cops are sitting on adjacent couches, Pepa and the main cop are each at the end of their respective couches, two ends that are right next to each other, allowing the viewer to get a better feel for that dynamic between male and female power.  When the cops stand up, so does Pepa, and this shows how she is on level with the men. 

However, most of the male characters in this scene fall into atypical passivity, which is brought upon by the women.  Pepa offers them some of her gazpacho that is spiked with sleeping pills, and the two cops, along with the telephone repairman, fall asleep.  The over-the-top nature of Almodovar greatly blends with Lucia taking the cops’ guns and directing them at Pepa.  This is a symbol for the flipped gender roles in terms of Lucia, because by her taking the guns, it’s as if she’s enforcing some kind of phallic power in the situation.  As this standoff is going on, there is shot-counter-shot editing as the camera is circling them as it takes in these two characters, showing that two women can be just as aggressive towards each other as men can be toward each other.  Pepa even encourages that they both forget about Ivan, saying, “I just want to forget him.  And you should do the same.”

The next scene that exemplifies the switching of gender roles is the one that follows right after the apartment scene, which involves a chase between a taxi and a motorcycle.  As Lucia distracts Pepa long enough to leave the apartment, she finds a biker waiting outside for his girlfriend.  Lucia threatens him with a gun, and he reluctantly gives her a ride, and is therefore another passive male figure who doesn’t assert himself.  The drastic differences in the characters’ clothing reflect the flip-flop of the film’s gender roles.  While Lucia is wearing an all-pink outfit, and is the more aggressive of the two, the biker is wearing a tougher outfit consisting of a black leather jacket and jeans, but is the weaker one.  Meanwhile, Pepa catches a cab along with the biker’s girlfriend, Ana, whose outfit matches Pepa’s, in terms of the use of red.  The girlfriend is wearing a red top under her black leather jacket, and also has reddish hair.  The outlandish set design for the cab, such as the cheetah-print interior and decorations hanging over the dashboard, as well as the vibrancy of the cab driver’s appearance, reflect the gleeful ridiculousness of the scene.  The filmmaker gives a further example of women taking control of their lives with his Ana character.  She tells Pepa, “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?”  Although she is just saying this in jest, it still fits with the theme of women being independent.  The few times we see Ana, she is always waiting for her boyfriend.  But, in this scene, she talks about being on her own.  That last part about needing a man has a connection to Pepa’s choice at the end of the film.

The chase brings the characters together at the airport.  There is a comical undertone in the beginning of this, as Lucia, all disheveled, walks into the airport in a calm, but determined, demeanor.  Her sense of calm comes off as comical because the viewer knows she is about to try and kill her husband.  And all this time, there is the over-the-top, almost cartoonish, sinister music playing.  This scene’s first main switch in gender roles comes in a brief exchange between Ivan and Paulina Morales as they wait to get on their flight:

Paulina: “You’re weak, Ivan.”                                                                                                                                                                          

Ivan: “Yes, sweetheart.”


Paulina: “Don’t agree with me!”                                                                                                                                                                         

Ivan: “But you’re right.”                                                                                                                                                                               

Paulina: “Sometimes I like to be wrong.”

The film has Paulina, a feminist, talking down to Ivan, who is just taking these belittling comments, when a man would normally defend himself against such comments as Paulina’s.  The weakness she is speaking of could possibly be his inability to make a full commitment to any woman; while Paulina, although not in love with Ivan anymore, is committed to saving him.  During this scene, Paulina is wearing a predominantly red blazer, reminding the audience of the red in the outfits for Pepa, Ana, and Marisa, the latter of whom in her first scene is wearing a red dress and is domineering over her fiancée, Carlos.

At the end of this scene, Almodovar flips the convention of a woman needing a man to a man needing a woman.  In this scene, Ivan tries to get Pepa to take him back:

Ivan: “Don’t hold a grudge.  Let’s have a drink, now, in the cafeteria.”                                                                                                        

Pepa: “No.  Yesterday, this morning, or even at noon today we could have.  But now it’s too late.  It’s been too late for the past two hours.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Ivan: “Then why did you come out here?”                                                                                                                                                                 

Pepa: “Lucia wanted to kill you and I came to stop her.  Since you’re out of danger, I’m leaving.  Goodbye.”

Almodovar flips the genre convention because he has the woman rescuing the man, instead of vice versa.  Even as Lucia is pulling out the gun, the viewer can see the airport security sleeping in the background.  They are all men, and are not doing their job in protecting the civilians, so it’s Pepa who must act as the hero.  Pepa is asserting herself because she refuses to take Ivan back, and also has the final goodbye and turns away before he can say anything else to change her mind.  It reminds the viewer of when Ana asks, “…who needs a man?”

With Pedro Almodovar’s direction, he breaks the gender conventions of female characters by making them more assertive, and the male characters more passive.  With the clever use of his camp aesthetic in the film, Almodovar brings creativity to the self-awareness of the story’s clichés as he has his characters come out of their own clichés and do something entirely different with the film’s concept.  

Works Cited

Cook, David A.  A History of Narrative Film.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.