Women in the midst of a fetishised world

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is an exemplary work of Pedro Almodóvar’s style. Released in 1988, it is the director’s 7th feature film. The story tells of one Madrileña actress, Pepa, whose heart is broken by an archetypal womanizer Iván. She has to deal with her sensuous overload, meanwhile other women — in particular, Lucía, Iván’s psychotic ex-wife, and Candela, another actress, who had hosted terrorists at her apartment — join in a similarly emotional rollercoaster ride. The whirl of events and coincidences combines an ironic story, almost a coming of age for modern women, not deprived of feeling love.

Women in the midst of a fetishised world

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a film that deeply resides in the world of things and objects that captures a hyperbolised spirit of la Movida Madrileña. The film is soaked in the atmosphere of post-Francoist Spain where the reestablished agency of women was intrinsically linked to the backbones of the newly established social norms: internationalisation, consumerism and an overall sense of freedom, progress and pluralism. The characters naturally exist in this material reality of the 80s: they are surrounded by multiple souvenirs, decorations and knick-knacks, they change dresses, jackets, wigs and shoes, they interact with phones, TVs, luggages, boardgames and kitchenware, they ride taxis and motorbikes, they care for pets and plants, they make coffee and cook gazpacho, they smoke cigarettes, write notes and listen to audio recordings. The objective essence of the film is crucial for Almodóvar’s visual language and storytelling. The tactility of the settings gives a sense of graspable physicality that in turn propels emotional response from the characters and viewers. The narrative seems to be intrinsically dependent on the spatial and temporal presence of La Movida — where the director himself finds his artistic roots — and this way it gives way to a kaleidoscope of swirling emotions and the apogee ‘de nervios’.

The title sequence is designed as a fashion magazine dazzling with bright colours, screaming letters, trendy outfits, slim models and their languid glances. The overarching importance of constructive power of objects is thus anticipated from the very beginning. Actresses, actors and different units of the crew are presented not just as names but according to their occupation: music as a concert hall, editing as photo frames, directing as a shooting setting. The opening slides are a deliberate collage — an idealised projection — of style, womanhood and romantic lore. The cutouts serve as construction blocks for a ‘conventionally perfect’ woman: sensual poses, elegant hand gestures, crimson lipsticks, bedroom eyes, black eyeliners, smooth outlines of legs, colourful heels, lace lingerie, opulent gowns, gleaming accessories, romantic male figures, flowers and butterflies. Almodovár hints at the essence of performative femininity that the film explores — it is as dramatically stereotypical as it is sincerely appreciated. Overt fetishism in this catalogue of womanhood is a disclosure of the artifice — yet it is a cherishing process, an acknowledgement of the richness and aesthetic value of this pretence as a form of outward self-expression. This way, the titles have a multifaceted function of a technical element and of a commentary on social constructs and their performativity.

The cinematic space of Women on the verge is arranged similarly. The establishing shot is a plastic house. Pepa is asleep in her doll’s house. Not only exactly artificial, it is more of an imaginative space, an idealised location for one young-spirited society to tell its stories.

The film’s visual excess hyperbolizes the arrival of consumerist society to Spain. Even though some objects in the film may not carry any specific meaning, they still link the story with the world of artefacts it takes place in. For instance, a model of an airplane in Pepa’s flat points to the failed-to-be-hijacked flight to Stockholm; while mocca-shaped earrings of Candela — looking too big and rather comical on her — slightly allude to the coffee she is asked to make to calm down. Objects often serve a role of props or ironic intrusions to move the story or ignite a comic coincidence: photos with dedications from Iván, spiked gazpacho, plastic flower that bends in fire, Candela’s lost shoe that Pepa takes to the lawyer, eye drops in Mamba taxi, Iván’s luggage that is moved there and back, Pepa’s red note to Iván, etc. Each one’s appearance is more than a one-off decorative occurrence.

Telephones and recording machines, microphones and clocks, shoes and the luggage — the objects are used and reused for different visual or narrative purposes. Their continuous reappearance alleviates them almost to the position of actors — side characters that assist or put obstacles, minor intruders that underline psychological mood of a scene, barely visible extras that contribute to the sense of urban vivacity. Such is the red note that Pepa leaves for Iván is read by Lucía who also comes to visit him — it’s the first time the two women meet. Later the note reappears at the night scene when a waste collector picks it to read aloud. Despite being a very small detail, it is a meticulously placed element that, first of all, highlights Pepa’s change of location, which is not indicated anyhow else — except for the building’s façade itself which is not distinctive much from the previous location at Almagro 38. Secondly, it is a point of reconsideration: after Pepa’s message has been reread, the heroine seems to think the situation over and lets it go for a time being. The note connects different events and a change of mind Pepa undergoes during the day, it marks one of the steps on the heroine’s way to get over her love affair.

If notes at the doors are smaller narrative props, such objects as gazpacho are more ‘pivotal’ — the soup is, in a way, a real Chekhov’s rifle. At first rather short, its appearance is both a narrative moment and an ornamental detail. On a visual level it is a part of the authentic ‘Spanish’ atmosphere of the film: it starts as a striking image of red tomatoes being chopped and blended in an extreme close-up with a fast-paced cutting. Later, as Pepa adds pills there, it becomes a signifier of her eager and bold intention to keep Iván by putting him to sleep — which she never has a chance to do. Yet, the gazpacho will tranquilize a handful of other characters: it will make Marisa fall asleep, thus anchoring her and Carlos in the flat; and stop the policemen’s interrogation — lulling all Pepa’s guests but Lucía to sleep. Finally, as the glass full of the red soup spills on the protagonist, it mars her shield of beauty and her pretence of order: the gazpacho ruins her outfit and irritates her eyes (the eye drops — another recurring object — are right there to help her with that). In this pretensely cathartic moment the soup is equally dramatic and absurd, exactly like the life in Almodóvar’s Madrid is.

Clothes are not mentioned here by accident: they are symbols of self-expression and self-assertion of the characters. Pepa changes her attire 8 times during the film, Lucía is seen in 3 sets of designed looks, while Candela appears in 2 different outfits. The scenes of dressing up and putting on makeup are examples of performative femininity. A form of masquerade, it is inherent in the heroines who must sustain their performed self in order to construct their gender and, at the same time, debunk patriarchal subjugation which is exposed through a mere theatricality of beauty and implied lookism (Girelli 252). The costumes are like a pendulum that reflects a gradual change in Pepa and Lucía’s mood. In particular, it can be said about Pepa, for whom dressing up is an act of self-restitution and self-care in the time of emotional tumult. As the heroine makes up her mind in regard to her breakup, she uses clothes to demonstrate her aim to move forward and accept some change: while during the first day that we see her she has 5 costumes, on the second day it is only 3. It is a sign of her gradual recovery, and ultimately she will not even bother to appear in the outfit stained with the gazpacho.

Female representation is generally a key interest of Pedro Almodóvar. Often referred to as a ‘women’s director’ — he is well known as a “spanish phenomenon … whose films … always include very complex and positive portrayals of women. Almodóvar is clearly unwilling to disregard the cinematic possibilities offered by half the human race.” (Kuhn and Radstone 381). Femininity is all over the film: in Pepa’s apartment, where the majority of action will take place, on the TV and posters, in the costumes, and in the strangers on the street. Yet it is not only the mere presence of women that makes the film feminist, it is the way it is the way the story is told and put forth. Almodóvar deals with the feminist apparatus in film language and accepts the premise of appreciating the banal, as if slightly blinking to feminist avant-garde cinema. He does not follow a rhythmic composition of slow cinema that essentialises domestic banality, but he integrates the idea of liberating a household-bound discourse on female representation rejecting a denunciation of the woman’s sphere as either trivial or frivolous. Pepa is often shown in the process of living in her household, which she in fact intends to change in order to find something newer and better. She cooks the gazpacho — the favourite meal for her man — she waters her plants, feeds the pets, she watches TV. In spite of being depicted as a well-known TV star (and she is such), the heroine is like many other women — there is an overarching feminine experience that she embodies. Her suffering from love is relevant to a general sense of disillusionment which breakups and unfaithful men bring.

Pepa’s lifestyle as a TV star is a part of the film’s deep embeddedness into media cultures of different sorts. Printed media and TV largely influenced the visual code of how late-80s Madrid is represented. Magazines characteristic of la Movida are found in, for example, the Mambo taxi, which the heroine will be lucky to catch multiple times throughout the film. The car’s interior is covered with knick-knacks, ‘welcome-to-smoke’ cigarettes and magazines which are a type of printed media completely different from stereotypical old-fashioned ideas of womanhood: no pretentiousness or poise are found on youthful and liberated images of modern women. The TV tower reappears as a real background during Pepa’s night walk and as an intro to the evening news which announces about the Shiite terrorist being caught. The suspect is a lover of Candela, an actress and a model, whom we first see on a screen being dubbed by Pepa. In fact, Pepa stars in some shows and advertisements; she and Iván also work as voice actors for TV. This way, not only ‘small screen’ culture is elevated and cherished as a backbone of the era, where technologies are an integral part of urban lifestyle but the whole informational bubble of Madrid is shown as a special place where stories of love and emotions can take place.

Women on the Verge is strongly grounded in the physical reality of the world. In particular, it is spatially and temporally cemented in contemporary Madrid which is the main scene of the already mentioned tectonic changes in Spanish society. Almodóvar uses real names and locations to outline the geography of the city. Thus, the zeitgeist is directly applied to the physical map — it is fictional but it derives from contemporary reality. Moreover, it is pinned temporally. Almodóvar includes a lot of clocks — the moment of time is not abstract but literal and practically calculable. This way, the story is to some extent inseparable from the city and the time. La Movida Madrileña provides a bright background for vivacity and liberation of Spanish society, but this lifestyle takes advantage of all the comforts of Western democratic capitalism. However, there is a sense of artificiality in the space. The establishing shot shows a mock-up of a house — not a real place. So is the view from Pepa’s terrace. However much production could have affected it, the flat on Montabal street feels rather like a theatre stage than a realistically shot location. It is a visual homage to soap operas or TV shows (think here both of feminist perspective and of cultural referencing), and it is another deconstructing element that erodes old-fashioned notions of reality and normality. The masquerade of the location is as playful and provocative as female sensuality portrayed in the film that lives in the streets of Madrid, inside its houses, on its TVs and within its telephone wires.

There are two that are essential as the signifiers of the zeitgeist: telephones and taxis

In addition to that, out of all the objects in the film’s constructed imagery, there are two that are essential as the signifiers of the zeitgeist: telephones and taxis. Different types of the former appear almost everywhere in the film, be it a garbage dump on the outskirts of the city or a downtown street of Montabal. The latter — a fast mode of transportation around Madrid — is a key chaperone of Pepa. Not only narrative hooks, they are diegetic kernels of the cinematic space and its sense of interconnectedness. The city is felt not only via exact names of streets or footage of emblematic sights — transport and telecommunication penetrate the urban lifestyle as if knitting it all together into one concise world, where distances are almost non-existent. This sense of location enhances the overall feeling of physicality of the film. Telephones symbolize the fast life of Madrid. They are a device of instant connection that is constantly used by the characters: with telephones they wait for calls, leave audio messages, argue, ask for help, relieve their emotions, and call the police.

The telephone is particularly special as a fetish commodity: not as an object per se, but as a transmitter of voice. Sound and particularly voice is what stands out in such a visually opulent film. Almodóvar highlights its significance in the very first scenes: the black-and-white dream sequence starts with Iván spraying his mouth. He later murmurs sweetened cliché phrases to a microphone he holds in his hands. The voice of Iván is an object — a commodity by itself. It is the heartbreaker’s breadwinning instrument and his deadly tool that smites women’s hearts. His voice is one with his speech: a constant sweet lie that he says or writes down to all his lovers.

To outline Iván’s presence, one must look back at the very beginning of the film. In addition to the visual richness, the opening titles is an invitation an imagery introduction to the gaze Iván casts on the women. The New Look or Mod nostalgia in the titles is not the style of Pepa’s generation, but rather of the one from which Lucía and Iván stem culturally. So it is the perception that is rather outdated for Pepa, Candela or Marisa. Yet, it is what Iván — or the men’s world in general — expects them to be, imposing a set of stereotypical tropes — the very performative play that the heroinas will indulge in. The soundtrack of Lola Beltrán’s ‘Soy infeliz’ (I’m Unhappy) enhances the overall message and dramatism of the title sequence, later leading to the opening scene, where the singer’s vinyl record appears with Iván’s note: No quiero oirte nunca decir Soy infeliz.

The power and autonomy of the voice is outlined in the scene at the recording studio: the camera clearly poses the microphone against Iván’s profile to bring our attention to the dynamic relation that his speaking has, independently of the man’s physical presence. In the following scene, when Pepa is alone recording her part of their dialogue, he is still there — now the camera focuses on the headphones that transmit the fetishised voice. She cries and faints from the mere sound of his wording, his humming and his timbre. This is how much power Iván’s bodiless presence has over his women. He is first an audial entity, and his body simply follows the aura that his voice creates. Lucía, too, falls victim to it. In her intense one-to-one talk with Pepa she confesses to having forgotten the heartbreaker. He would not recognize his face unless it was not his voice. The moment she had heard it, she regained ‘razon’, and from then on pretended her sanity. It would not be an overexaggeration to say that both Pepa and Lucía are in love with his audial image — at least, in this form he mostly exists in the film. What the viewer knows of Iván is mostly from the recordings that he leaves for the heroines. The phones’ omnipresence is not just a technological advancement of the age — it allows the voice to be equally omnipresent. Penetrative force of human voice is carried around the city with the means of telecommunication. Yet, Iván is absent and as evasive and manipulative as he has always been. This is why Pepa is not only obsessed with receiving a call, she is also angry at her phone to such an extent that she breaks it twice.

Iván is first an audial entity, and his body simply follows the aura that his voice creates

However, not only do the devices connect the space or carry sensory fetishism, they also establish the relation between the characters. Lucía and Pepa first talk to each other on the phone — but they are not mere voices. On the contrary, they are as if physically confronted with each other. Editing puts them in a clear opposition, erasing the real distance in between — the telephones and wires bring the two close enough to feel the tension and amoureux rivalry. This demonstrates that the heroines are not ephemeral entities, neither are their emotions, while Iván is a fantasy — a subterfuge or a superstructure devoid of its physical base.

To further follow fetishism behind the sensory perception, there is another object worth mentioning. The thing opposed to hearing must be seeing — and one symbolic signifier of it is the eyes, or in the case of the film — glasses. When Pepa records the love scene from Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) she wears glasses — one and only time she does it. Struck by the eminent power of Iván’s voice, Pepa faints with the glasses falling off her. The next shot takes the object in an extreme close-up. This is her defeat — a triumph of the audial sensibility over her clear vision. When glasses appear for the second time, it is Lucía who puts on the glasses — right before shooting her son’s father. Killing Iván for her is the only way to shatter all the illusions. Her ‘regaining’ sight can be a final way for her to see the truth that Iván’s voice always clouded with his love games. In her anger Lucía is unable to overcome the feelings, but Pepa seems to be reasoned enough. Her sight might have been cleared with the eye drops that Mambo courteously had acquired for his taxi. At the airport, Pepa and Iván are shown physically present at the same spot for the first time. Facing her love obsession, the heroine restores and states her independence — she leaves him for good.

Thus, visual perception is a mighty tool in the hands of modern women to regain and assert their agency. This is why the diegesis is full of bright colours and theatric artifice — through this rich imagery Almodóvar deconstructs patriarchal subterfuge and highlights sincerity of the womanhood whose exaggeration and emotional overload keeps them real and alive. Ultimately, the film does not mock the amorousness of the protagonists — it is unfortunate but these men are attractive, and one cannot deny it. However, the men are the problem here. Their voices should be exposed — and the real state of affairs should come to light. Pepa must overcome her nervous breakdown to realise it. In the end, these are women who are to stay safe on Noah’s arc. Not voices, phones or lies.