What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Gloria is a typical Spanish housewife - or is she? Her small apartment would seem enough to keep her occupied, housing as it does her indifferent taxi-driver husband, two sons who have discovered the fringe benefits of drug-dealing, and a self-reliant mother-in-law with a pet lizard. But Gloria craves a better life, or at least, for starters, sex with a potent man. In Almodóvar's early feature, the mad inversions and absurdities familiar from Law of Desire and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown are delivered without the fuss of incorporating the imperatives of, respectively, melodrama and farce. The result is undiluted scabrous humour, with short, sharp scenes and a crazy string of plots involving the forging of Hitler's diaries, murder by hambone, and keeping a neighbour company during her bonking hour. Almodóvar directs throughout with splendid zip; all in all, the film's piquant look at high-rise life is far more cutting and funnier than his later box-office hits.