Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom

I like this movie,maybe it's not the best of Almodovar but it's the first containing all the themes that he will explore. It's a movie about freedom,the new freedom acquired by Spanish, Franco is dead and now they can do whatever they want, even bad taste jokes. It's the beginning of "la Movida",now they can criticize stupid cops with their macho mustache,now they can urinate where they want... I like it because it's the awakening of Spain, with all the excess possible,with all it's qualities and defaults. this movie is a sort of coming out,Spain have the right to do what it want to do. It's the first spit against pseudo-morality against the wall erected by Franco all over Spain. It's a punk movie.

'Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980)' is Pedro Almodóvar's first commercially released film. Shot on a shoestring budget equivalent to about only 3000 euros, this transgressive affair took around a year-and-a-half of weekend work from a volunteer crew to come to life. Concerned principally with being as taboo as possible, the piece is still boundary pushing even when viewed through a modern lens; just imagine how shocking it would have been when it first released a mere handful of years after Spain's infamous dictator Francisco Franco finally kicked the bucket and the country could (at least attempt to) progress past his fascist rule. It serves as a reminder that the people it depicts, with all their socially unacceptable appearances, desires and otherwise unexpected kinks, have always existed even when those that despise them seek to stamp them out. The plot-light picture may have its flaws, but at its best it's a celebration of sex and freedom and a disregard for restrictive tradition that sizzles with a punky energy and is already a strong indicator for what sort of stories interest its director the most. Indeed, it's pretty fully formed in terms of being unmistakably Almodóvar, even if it is rough around the edges and doesn't even come close to the heights of later entries in his repertoire. It's a shocking, trashy feature by design, but its need to be shocking and trashy often outweighs its aspirations of being cohesive and compelling. Some of it is rather off-putting in its flippancy, with sexual assault and domestic violence being portrayed in a way that just feels a bit poorly handled. That the characters don't react to these things the way we expect them to doesn't mean the movie is condoning them, but it doesn't do enough to condemn them either. Ultimately, though, this is the sort of transgressive experience that appeals to a specific sensibility and primarily serves as an act of rebellion. It's dodgy at times and it isn't massively compelling overall, but it's also relatively entertaining and admirably disinterested in so-called good taste. If you know what you're getting into, you might just have a good time.

Actually this is my favorite Almodóvar film because he wasn't trying to please or appease anyone with this movie, he just says what he wants to say and does it in a very original and (at the time) provocative way. A bit dated now but still a brilliant deconstruction of Spanish culture with zany characters taken straight out of a John Waters movie. It's also the only one of his movies where Almodóvar (looking VERY young) makes an appearance himself (as the judge of a penis size competition no less).

Considering that this movie was made in less than a week with a budget of around $5,000, it's actually quite well done. The cinematography is probably the weak point but the story is great and the characters a parody of everything good and bad about Spain in the 80's. It is full of in-your-face-irreverent kind of humor as well as great little cultural bits and references that only native Spanish speakers or people familiar with Spanish culture will get. One of my favorites is the song "Murciana Marrana" that Alaska and her punk rock band sing as an ode to her new found lesbian lover and repressed house wife - hilarious lyrics and pure 80s punk rock at its best. The movie itself is really genius and despite some technical shortcomings, it's a real gem.

"However, you begin to disappoint with the first dialog (silly and absurd, no provocative), and it's better if we don't talk about the papers and acting (what happened to great Carmen Maura?!!)." I totally disagree with that, this movie is great, full of references to other great directors,which I guess the person who wrote this comment failed to see.

The actors are simply great, and act in the most purely Almodovar-John Waters way, making all the dialogs hilarious, playing with language (changing register in the same sentence from the highest to the lowest, making absurd speeches, from the point of view of the linguistics) and intonation, which I think is the greatest tool used by almodovar in his films.

Again, he rises daily life and common problems to the absurdity, by magnifying them, making us laugh at our own problems.

One of his greatest movies, in his purest style, which he greatly used again in his latest film "volver".

Felix Rotaeta rapes Carmen Maura. She decides to get even by getting his wife to leave him.

Pedro Almodóvar's second feature is full of kinks and weirdos in a Spain where Francisco Franco is dead. Yet I find a naivete to this one that I didn't in his next movie -- his first feature is not readily available. There's plenty of drugs and non-normative sex, with sado-masochism and lesbianism and people rutting in punk rock clubs. Yet there's a tentative attitude to the way the director handles it, as if he's an anthropologist observing the natives, not yet ready to draw any conclusion. There's plenty to shock a conservative audience, but it lacks the deliberate, in-your-face offensiveness that he would later assume. The characters are wearily ironic about the situations they find themselves in.