Music Box' `Viva Pedro' series offers solid tribute to the director

`Viva Pedro' series offers solid tribute to the director
By Michael Wilmington
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published September 1, 2006

"Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (star)(star)(star)(star), the wild tale of Spanish television actress Pepa (Carmen Maura) and her attempts to get over a jilting by her faithless lover and fellow actor Ivan (Fernando Guillen), is the most celebrated movie of Spain's perverse auteur Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar's new film, "Volver," arrives in Chicago later this fall, but "Women," meanwhile, is a perfect opener for the eight-film Almodovar retrospective, "Viva Pedro," starting at the Music Box Theater Friday. It screens for a week (Sept. 1-7), followed by seven other Almodovars through the end of the month (Sept. 28), all in restored 35 mm prints.

They're all memorable--sardonic, witty, packed with emotion and personality and filled with lusty comic performances of tormented women and irresponsible men (and vice versa) by Almodovar's formidable acting troupe.

"Women," loosely inspired by Jean Cocteau's play "The Human Voice," is the funniest of all his movies: a madcap farce/romance/drama that suggests a great Hollywood screwball comedy operating without censorship. As Pepa and Ivan's old apartment fills up with increasingly strange and mad people after Ivan leaves with his new lover and Pepa decides to rent out the place, the sheer absurdity of the gathering crowd becomes a healing force for Pepa, even as they make the audience weak with laughter.

In comes Candela (Maria Barranco), a fugitive with a Shiite terrorist boyfriend, and also Lucia (Julieta Serrano), Ivan's abandoned lover and the mother of his son. Most disturbingly, here comes the son: Carlos (played by Antonio Banderas in one of the early performances that made him famous), his girlfriend Marisa (Rossy de Palma) in tow, and his own wandering eye drawn to both Candela and Pepa.

Sex and emotional trauma are subjects both amusing and painful for Almodovar, whose own gay perspective is more obvious in male romances like 1987's searing "Law of Desire" (also in the series). So, in "Women," he can both laugh at Pepa's predicament and view her with due seriousness. With Maura delivering an explosive performance, Almodovar presents Pepa's tale with gusto--vibrant colors, gaudy personality, mad jokes and a sexiness that erupts off the screen. "Women" is a feminist comedy with real bite; it always brings down the house.

Dates for the other "Viva Pedro" Almodovars: "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "The Flower of My Secret," Sept. 8-14: "Live Flesh," "Law of Desire" and "Bad Education," Sept. 15-21; "Matador," Sept. 22-28.

MPAA rating for "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown": R (adult situations, strong sexual content, profanity).

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mwilmington@tribune.com