2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

dmrn-91617 This is one of Almodovar's best movie. And honestly one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It's at the same time funny and sad, surrealistic and hyper-realistic. Carmen Maura is a tragic character and she's a fantastic actress. Quirky ideas flow from all sides, strange characters, but none of them are out of place, because they are just humans: petty and sublime. There is no judgment in Almodovar movies. Things are what they are and therefore there is no ridicule. It's always amazing to wonder - what was this movie about? Pretty much nothing, just ordinary life, and yet it's full of events that are out of the ordinary.

johnnyboyz Pedro Almodóvar's 1984 film What Have I Done to Deserve This!? is as much as a mouthful as it is to say as it might be to entirely summarise. The sheer extravagancy of the title, which is '¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!' in Spanish, echoes the broad and rather open canvas on which the breakthrough Spanish director paints his portraits and the fates of an equally rather disparate group of Spaniards tumbling out of Franco's Spain. The setting is 1980s Madrid, the capital of a nation that has since come out of a political reign of a definitive sort and is now on the brink of ending three quarters of a decade under a fresher, freer political situation. This as the film covers two groups, indeed families or classes, whom have progressed out of the old times and into the new ones. As a whole, the film works as a somewhat sly comedy and pays substantial attention to Spain as a nation by way of its capital city and those that inhabit it.The film opens with a collection of odd, colourful titles which is in direct contrast in terms of basic codes and conventions to the activity going on behind it; that being of a martial art variety in which shouting and the flinging around of wooden poles as a dozen or so people twist and turn in perfect unison is played out. Gloria (Maura), a middle-aged cleaner whom works at the recreation hall in which these people practice, reenacts what she observes in what is a rare moment during which we see her doing something that seems planned, ordained and conclusive. This fleeting moment of control and rhythm we see her engage in is in stark contrast to her chaotic home life, in which she must contend with two teenage sons whom are either homosexual or dealing drugs in their spare time; a brute of a husband, named Antonio (López), who wants to be with another woman but when he is with Gloria, makes love to her despite close family members being in near proximity as well as a mother-in-law named Abuela (Lampreave), who comes with her own quirks.What Have I Done to Deserve This!? works as a character piece exploring the women in the film such as Gloria, her mother-in-law and neighbour Cristal (Forqué), who's additionally a prostitute. Most of the women in the film are good-natured and tend to lean more towards helping and aiding others as they stick together, their existence playing out amidst men, or indeed male characters, of whom are deeply flawed in their characteristics and attitudes as domestic violence; confusion over sexuality; paedophilia; drug infused lifestyles and infidelity are the majority of characteristics they embody.Despite the sheer level of characters in the film, Almodóvar does a credible job in balancing the right amount of both introduction and progression required for each person. Antonio, for instance, is established to have known a German woman who was someone that was into Nazi memorabilia, but whom he drove around as a chauffeur many years ago and developed a bond with anyway. This, followed by scene in which he reiterates the importance of one's signature on a level with one's surname to one of his sons; an exchange in which the aim is to evoke a sense of individualism and identity, that you are one amongst the rest and ought to be proud of who you are. The link to the woman affiliated with the aforementioned woman is still fresh and sets up a relatively unnerving sense about Antonio, something that additionally arises later on to do with forgery of a German manuscript.The characters in What Have I Done to Deserve This? walk rainy, grey and unwelcoming Spanish streets; the film is shot in a manner that acts as an anti-thesis to how tourists view Spain. The majority of the people in the film are poor; indeed Gloria's dysfunctional family we zero in on for the duration of the film turn to counterfeiting and drug dealing to sustain an income. Next door, Cristal entertains a number of male clients; one of which very early on is a supposedly well-off writer whose financial situation doesn't seem as desperate as everyone else's, but this doesn't, in any way at all, elevate him above those of Gloria's family as his infidelity and ideas of a criminal nature play out.The film, in the nicest possible way, feels like three or four going on at once. There are moments, indeed a number of premises, which you feel would make films all by themselves; situations that Almodóvar could flesh out even more than what he does. This echoes what he does in his 2006 piece entitled Volver, in which three women come about a series of bizarre incidences but just seem to act around them rather than act because of them. Almodóvar does this as a director; keeping everything as low key as possible as content of a pretty disturbing nature such as the murder of one's partner and a drug dealing teenager just seems to 'happen' around this housewife and middle aged woman who lives in a crazy, mixed up world. Almodóvar doesn't exploit these things for sake of cheap laughs, instead opting to point out that these problems contained within Spain's society are still prominent, regardless of what positives one might take out of it being a decade on from Franco's regime. The film operates as a rather black comedy, as a somewhat stripped down drama with its fair share of powerful moments and as an interesting case study between classes and gender.

towerbridge For me, and I think for most people, there's nothing like a good narrative.And this film has exactly that: nothing like a good narrative.In fact, its a real mess. For example, one character has an idea to make a lot of money, goes on a journey, comes back and what happens? Nada.The later Almodovar films which I have seen - Women On The Verge Of A Mental Breakdown, All About My Mother and Talk To Her - are all much better for placing their observations and ironies within the context of an interesting story. (A similar comment could be made about Mike Leigh's films, namely that those which have a real story e.g. Secrets & Lies, are much superior to those which don't e.g. Naked, All Or Nothing...) I don't want to be completely dismissive of this film, which is energetic and iconoclastic, but rather to counterbalance the view of some others here that this film is a masterpiece. I say it isn't. Its an immature work of a very exceptional director.

flordemisecreto I recently saw this movie, the first by Pedro Almodovar i've watched, and i absolutely loved it. It may not have been as well produced and highly revered as his other movies but thats what made it all the more an interesting and quirky personal discovery. The incorporation of the little girl with telekinetic powers spontaneously throughout the movie was hilarious, as was the fact that everything that she made float was blatantly on strings. ANYWAY! I've been going insane trying to figure out the name and artist of the song that's played during the ending scene of the movie (an instrumental with some sort of synthesizer?) It's so beautiful and fits perfectly with the scene. If anyone knows that info pleassseeee email it to me because, as mentioned, i love it! Thanks!