After a few days of shooting, Pedro Almodóvar had a conversation with Antonio Banderas in which he told Banderas that he needed to drop all of his tics as an actor, because the director wanted a really restrained character and the actor was playing him in a more typical psycho way.
In one scene Dr. Ledgard is shown working on a bonsai tree. Bonsai is the art of creating spectacularly twisted dwarf trees, contrary to their natural patterns, by manipulating their nutrition, growing conditions and with ruthless pruning. This mirrors his ongoing experiment with Vera.
Pedro Almodóvar worked on the screenplay for almost a decade, and what initially was an adaptation ended up being more of a story inspired by Thierry Jonquet's novel.
One of the books in Vera's room is "Angel at My Table" by Janet Frame. This book is an autobiographical account of how she grew from someone, in the author's own words, "as sexless as a stick of wood", to an appreciation of her own sexuality. (The book is acknowledged in the credits.)
The man that goes to the dress shop to bring his wife's garments, is Agustín Almodóvar, producer of the film and brother of Pedro Almodóvar.