Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Once upon a time)
Pedro Almodóvar
A dubbing actress, Pepa has just been dumped by her lover and partner, Iván. She sets fire to his bed, piles sleeping pills in the gazpacho and… the doorbell rings: Iván’s own son and his fiancée, Marisa, come to visit the apartment. Doorbell rings: Candela, a friend, arrives in a panic – her latest crush, a terrorist, is due to blow up a plane, the very one Iván is about to take with his new mistress. The doorbell rings: Iván’s wife Lucía bursts in with a revolver.
STARRING
Carmen Maura
Antonio Banderas
Julieta Serrano
DIRECTOR
Pedro Almodóvar
WRITER
Pedro Almodóvar &
Jean Cocteau
SOUND
Luis Castro
Gilles Ortion
Eduardo Fernandez
Antonio Rodriguez
PHOTOGRAPHY
José Luis Alcaine
EDITOR
José Salcedo
MUSIC
Bernardo Bonezzi
DISTRIBUTOR
El Deseo
LaurenFilm S.A
Pedro Almodóvar

After spending his early years in Calzada de Calatrava, Pedro Almodóvar moved with his parents to Extremadura at the age of 8 (there’s still some doubt as to his real year of birth). Born into a relatively poor family of muleteers in a region ravaged by the Spanish Civil War, he grew up surrounded by women, a fact that would not go unnoticed in his cinema. A particularly gifted pupil, he studied with the Salesian Fathers and the Franciscans, a painful experience that led to a loss of faith and a certain aversion to religion. To relax and get away from the strict confines of his upbringing, he frequented movie theaters.
At the age of 17, Pedro Almodóvar left for Madrid, alone, with no money and no job, before embarking on a tour of Europe that took him to London and Paris. He wanted to learn cinema, but on Franco’s orders, the Official Film School had just closed its doors. After several odd jobs, he landed an office job at the Spanish National Telephone Company, where he stayed for twelve years. At the same time, he wrote screenplays, shot short films on Super 8 from 1974 to 1979, met Carmen Maura, which led to theater work with the independent troupe “Los Goliardos” (in which he showed a definite taste for cross-dressing), and founded a parody punk-rock band “Almodovar y McNamara”.
FILMOGRAPHY
All About My Mother (1999)
Volver (2006)
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Talk to Her (2002)
Bad Education (2004)
Pain and Glory (2019)
High Heels (1991)
Julieta (2016)
Broken Embraces (2009)
Carne trémula (1997)
I’m so excited (2013)
Parallel Mothers (2021)