35 years Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
On March 14, 1988 in the Spanish city of Murcia, the premiere of Pedro Almodovar's film "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)" took place.
In 1988, it was seen by 1,784,697 viewers in Spain, making it the second most watched film after "The Last Emperor" by Bernardo Bertolucci. On a $700,000 budget, the film grossed $8 million in Spain and another $7.2 million in the United States and Canada. With these figures, the film became the highest grossing Spanish film.
In September 1988, the film was presented to guests and participants of the International Film Festival in Venice, where it received a nomination for the main prize - the Golden Lion. However, the jury of the film festival, chaired by the famous Italian director Sergio Leone, awarded its main prize to Ermanno Olmi's film "La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker)".
In early 1989, Pedro Almodovar's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" was nominated for the American Golden Globe Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association considered the Danish film "Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)" directed by Bille August to be more worthy of this award. A similar situation has developed in the competition for the Oscars.
In the same 1989, Pedro Almodovar for directing this film was awarded the David di Donatello Italian Film Academy Award as Best Foreign Director, beating Woody Allen ("Other Woman") and Barry Levinson ("Rain Man"). True, the film itself lost in the dispute for this award to "Rain Man".
In 1990, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" was nominated for the British BAFTA Award in the category of Best Non-English Language Film, but the British Film Academy preferred the French film "La vie et rien d'autre (Life and Nothing But)" directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
The above-mentioned festival achievements of the film "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and its director have transferred Pedro Almodovar from the category of enfant-terribly of Spanish cinema to the category of grands of world cinema. And besides, they provided world fame to 28-year-old Antonio Banderas.
At home, Pedro Almodovar's film received 17 nominations for the national Goya film award and won 5 of them, including the most important nomination as Best Film.
The vast majority of professional and authoritative film critics devoted their laudatory reviews to Pedro Almodovar's film "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown". For example, noted French film critic Gerard Crespo wrote in his review:
"This is a delightful hysterical vaudeville that allows the director to refine his taste for female portraits already drawn in his previous films, which will culminate in the next two decades."
The following figures speak about the evaluation of the picture by ordinary moviegoers: 57% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Pedro Almodovar's film "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" according to FilmGourmand version was 9.03 , which allowed it to take 157th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
