Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) made Pedro Almodóvar an international name. It earned an Academy Award nomination and a Venice screenwriting prize, and it announced one of world cinema's great chroniclers of female passion. After a string of provocations, the Spanish director turned his anarchic energy to screwball comedy, and the result is dazzling.

Carmen Maura plays Pepa, the actress whose abandonment by her lover sets off a single delirious day of overlapping crises, with a young Antonio Banderas among the bystanders. Almodóvar shoots a candy-coloured, pop-art Madrid of bold reds, designer interiors and a celebrated spiked gazpacho, and he runs the farce with the precision of classic Hollywood comedy without losing sight of the wounded, resilient women at its centre. The timing is immaculate, and Maura holds the whole contraption together.

It came out of the cultural explosion of post-Franco Spain known as la Movida, became a worldwide arthouse sensation, and laid the foundation for Almodóvar's later acclaim with All About My Mother and beyond. Its mixture of melodrama and comedy, and its devotion to female experience, have shaped film-makers well beyond Spain. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is stylish, hilarious and big-hearted, the joyous breakthrough of a major artist hitting his stride, and it opened the door to the international triumphs that followed.