No one writes women quite like Pedro Almodóvar, at least not anyone who has been working in the medium of film in the last forty years. From his earliest days of subversive, darkly comical morality tales that took him to the furthest corners of society, to the present moment where he has engaged with many more serious and profoundly moving stories, resulting in him ascending to the position of arguably the most important living European director, he has consistently been celebrated for extracting some of the best work from a wide range of actresses. One of his most acclaimed and unforgettable films is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spanish: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios), which is not only one of his best works, but also the film that allowed him to break through to a much wider global audience. The story of a middle-aged woman lamenting the impending loss of her lover, while dealing with an array of other eccentric characters, is one that is positively brimming with the deranged energy that most of Almodóvar’s earlier work exuded, so it’s hardly difficult to understand exactly why this film is seen as the enormous success and the iconic dark comedy that is revered as the gold standard for what a great piece of social commentary should aspire to be. From beginning to end, Almodóvar takes us on an unpredictable, wild journey into the heart of the middle-class malaise felt by the many cosmopolitan Spanish women the director encountered throughout his life, serving as both a joyful celebration of their idiosyncrasies, and a brutal evisceration of their pitiful existences, all of which are sewn together into the fabric of this strange but hilarious comedy that barely survives the director’s hilariously offbeat sense of humour that makes it such a classic of 1980s cinema, and a defining moment for Almodóvar as an artist.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is just about as far from subtle as one can get – in terms of both narrative and visual style, Almodóvar is pushing the boundary, embracing the same gaudy approach that kickstarted his career and made viewers who weren’t angered by his sexually-explicit, morally-ambigious stories of debauchery and madness pay attention to him as a bright young talent. Yet even at its most garish, this film is never tacky – like one of his similarly-indelicate contemporaries John Waters (both artists citing mutual admiration over the years), Almodóvar understands that effective cinematic provocation is the combination of both good taste and bad taste (how else can we explain Dark Habits, a film that serves as an affront to the Catholic Church with its drug-addicted, sexually-perverted nuns, while still being as elegant as any more traditional comedy?), and striking the perfect balance between the two can result in absolutely spellbinding works of daring satire. Just when you think the director has done everything he can with this story and taken these characters to the literal edge of their sanity, he proves that he can go even further, each scene compounding the hilariously demented tension that simmers between these characters, both individually and in contrast to one another. Almodóvar doesn’t waste time easing us into this world – from the first moment of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, there is a sense that the director isn’t interested in a delicate approach, choosing to find nuance in unexpected places, and allowing his dark sense of humour to envelope the more traditional aspects of the story, leading to a film that is almost indescribable in its approach to the comedy, but that we don’t struggle to understand, since there is an elusive quality that bolsters this film and makes it quite unique, even when it is slightly impenetrable, or moving at a pace far too fast for us to actively keep up this dizzying narrative.

If we can put a saddle on Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and hold on for just a brief moment, it’s easy to see why this was such an enormous success – there were simply no stories like this being produced in cinema. The trope of the “hysterical housewife” is one that dates back to the beginning of fiction as a whole, but it was Almodóvar who saw the potential for it to be the subject of something far more interesting than just overly dramatic, middle-aged women lamenting their broken dreams and lost lovers. These components are present here, but the director looks at them through a different lens, fashion these ideas into the form of an intentionally over-the-top melodrama that mines through decades of socio-cultural theory and feminist activism to find the story of a group of wildly different women using whatever resources they can find to get their way, regardless of the consequences. It doesn’t sound like much, and the basic premise seems far too simple to justify the exorbitant tone – but through actively engaging with a series of common ideas, and repurposing them to be more reflective of the more off-kilter aspects of society (which is essentially what this film is aiming to do), we can see how brilliant a social satire Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown manages to be, using overly-dramatic scenarios to invoke a strange but recognizable version of the world. One has to wonder how much of this film inspired the oft-ridiculed telenovelas that came after it, since while the genre has technically existed since the 1950s, many seem to be intent on capturing the same demented spark of darkly comical satire that made Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown such a cultural event, but this will always reign supreme as one of the most important entries into Spanish-language melodrama, since no one seems to be able to evoke quite as much theatrical madness as Almodóvar and his coterie of equally-deranged collaborators.

On the subject of his collaborators, it’s redundant to say that Almodóvar writes women well without paying tribute to the people who helped him prove it over the years. Throughout his career, the director has established a solid group of performers that have regularly appeared in his films – these “Chicas Almodóvar” have become his most reliable and consistently brilliant collaborators, and it only helps that each one of them is a gifted performer in her own right. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown assembles many of the most iconic ladies in the director’s oeuvre – Rossy de Palma, Chus Lampreave, Julieta Serrano, Kiti Mánver, María Barranco and most importantly, the incredible Carmen Maura, who leads this film with the incredible gusto and intricately-woven complexity that have made her arguably Almodóvar’s most celebrated collaborator. Each of these actresses has an incredible sense of humour, which is vitally important for a film like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which requires them to surrender to the outright absurdity that bursts through in every scene – and purely as an acting showcase, this film demonstrates with a ferocious conviction the absolute brilliance that lurks beneath Almodóvar’s films. Each one of these performances is distinct, every actress giving a layered and complex portrayal of a very different kind of character – and considering the director was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, which is known for only utilizing a single performer, and turning this basic idea into this bold and ambitious ensemble piece, we can only be truly inspired by how Almodóvar continuously proved his outright brilliance as both a writer and director, each moment of this film reflecting an engaging and thoughtful collaboration between a filmmaker and his motley crew of exquisite muses, creating a symbiotic relationship – Almodóvar writes them incredible roles that define their career, while the actresses interpret his irreverent, achingly beautiful writing.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is just as brilliant as its reputation would have you believe – and like many of the director’s greatest films, it is even more rewarding when the viewer revisits it, since the madcap, fast-paced energy of the film means that there are small details we initially miss at first, but which only enrichen subsequent visits to this strange version of the world that Almodóvar holds so much reverence for. There’s a fascinating complexity to the film, a kind of intensely harsh approach to how the role of women, even as late as the 1980s, was filtered through the presence of men, this particular detail being one of the most interesting components of the film, serving as the foundation for the film’s peculiar sense of humour. However, as sardonic as his portrayal of these characters may be, Almodóvar clearly held a fondness for the people they represented, which is shown through the mercilessly funny and nuanced roles he gives to each one of these actresses, who in turn develop them, using their own discretion to create these eccentric women, all of whom experience their sanity holding on by a slender thread. Incredibly influential, both in terms of defining Almodóvar’s career going forward (serving as his breakthrough to international audiences, each of his subsequent films now carrying a level of prestige, even when they were just as provocative and boundary-pushing), and in how it set a foundation for European cinema, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is an absolutely terrific film that finds humour in the most unexpected places, and genuinely seems to be enjoying the process of venturing into the demented minds of these ladies as they grapple with heartbreak, indiscretion, addiction and ill-advised romances, leading to a hilarious and potent satire that keeps us guessing, never giving us too many answers to the burning existential questions on which the film is constructed.