What Have I Done to Deserve This?

This is certainly one of Almodovar's best movies. It has more than the average movie and is actually life as it is on many occasions. The thin but very subtle humor in all of his movies and the personages in the movies make him a master director who knows what's going on in life at the moment of making a film. Very much it is story about people living together but don't know each-other. With slices of sex, drugs, addiction, humor he brings you to a thin laugh although most problems in the movie are real problems and aren't to be taken lightly. A film of making choices in life and go further and stand with this choices, and keep on smiling and hoping whatever happens.

I love Pedro Almodovar. He is a marvelous, fun, uninhibited filmmaker who has made so many great films, including "Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "Volver," "All About My Mother," "Broken Embraces," and others.

This is an offbeat film about dysfunction like you've never seen it. OMG. Carmen Maura plays Gloria, who is addicted to No-Doz and works as a maid in Madrid. She's married to a jerk who drives a taxi and is a forger. He's crazy over a German singer, his former employer.

The couple has two sons. One is a gay hustler, and the other sells drugs.

Her mother-in-law lives with them, a woman who is constantly trying to obtain food as if it's gold and then sells it to the family.

Now they have a good chance at some big money, when Gloria's husband has a chance to forge Hitler's memoirs and have his old employer pretend to be the owner. Gloria also gives her hustler son to her dentist. You read that right.

Gloria's best friend is her neighbor, the hilarious Cristal, a call girl who wants to go to Vegas. Her other neighbor has a young child that she's awful to, at least verbally, but the child has magic powers.

I did say it was off the wall.

In the midst of all this, there is drama and poignancy of a woman doing anything she can to survive in the city during Franco's regime.

Someone said that the way Almodovar sets things up, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. But if you do both, there may just be a solution.

You have to take Almodovar as he is - wild, funny, with a message about humanity there. This film is outrageous. I loved it.

I found myself wrapped up in this off-beat movie, off-beat that is, for anyone but Almodóvar in the mid 1980s. For him, this one was sort of tame. It's populated by an Almodovaran crowd of demimonde, and struggling proletarians and intellectuals. Some take drugs to get by, some sell drugs but won't take them. Sex is a commodity, and honor a dubious value. The struggle to survive in a harsh urban environment ought not be as comic as this often is, so it's not surprising when Almodóvar brings a little emotional sustenance to leaven the pessimism. But nobody in this film should be taken at face value, least of all the director, and nothing should be taken too seriously. It's fun, and in the end, that's enough.

In Madrid, the housewife Gloria (Carmen Maura) lives in a tiny apartment with her husband, the taxi driver and forger Antonio (Angel de Andres- Lopez); her lunatic mother-in-law, who is addicted in bottled water and cupcakes; and two teenage sons, one of them a drug dealer and the other gay.

Gloria works as cleaning lady to raise some money for her dysfunctional family and is addicted in pills; her best friend is her neighbor, the call-girl Cristal (Verónica Forqué). Antonio has a secret passion on a decadent German singer for whom he had worked as driver in Germany. A writer tries to convince Antonio to forge letters from Hitler and travels to Germany to meet the singer to invite her to participate in the scheme. Meanwhile Gloria delivers her gay son to a pervert dentist. Her mother-in-law finds a lizard while walking with her grandson on the street and they call it Dinero (Money) and bring it home. When Gloria has an argument with Antonio, she hits him on the head with a piece of wood, killing him. Now the police detectives investigate the murder case.

"¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!" (meaning "What did I do to deserve this?) is a tragicomic film by Almodóvar with the adventures of a housewife in Madrid. The situations are hilarious and absurd, and the characters are composed by a forger, a kleptomaniac, a drug-dealer, a homosexual, a prostitute, a psychic, a lunatic, an addicted, an impotent with premature ejaculation, an alcoholic writer, an abusive mother and so on. The result is really a funny and politically incorrect film of this anarchic director. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Que Fiz Eu Para Merecer Isto?" ("What Did I do to Deserve This?")

Early Almodovar is something that always keeps me fascinated! He's absolutely free of all his refined technical skills (latest films) and a real "hooligan", provoking, and full of brilliant jokes. "What have I done to deserve this?" is one of my top-Almodovar films, due to magnificent acting of Carmen Maura but not only. Almodovar, not yet burdened by the reputation of "maestro" is extremely free in expression, he does everything what is allowed and "not allowed" to do in cinema. Terrific mixture of Italian neo-realism, (remember the last episode, when Carmen sees off her family and returns home..) marvelous sarcasm, parody on intellectual cinema, and a tart-like melodrama with too much sugar. This is called Almodovar, a genius who is not afraid to seem foolish and therefore never seems foolish. A genius of KITSCH!

Haven't seen this film yet? What a lucky one you are! Be prepared for unforgettable impressions. And finally: Highly recommended for those who enjoyed "VOLVER" (these two films have much in common)