618
PARTISAN REVIEW
particular freedom they were most looking forward. To my astonishment,
the inevitable answer was, "We're looking forward to getting pornography."
In Spain pornography has taken on special significance as a gesture of
defiance against restrictions of the Church, the military, the bourgeois family.
Such restrictions are confirmed by
The Good Love,
mentioned above, in which
figures of authority and puritan inhibitions are portrayed as obstacles placed
between a young couple. Later Spanish films have included much more than
nudity. Perhaps it isjust Spanish realism that has presented pornography for
what it is: sadistic, violent, sometimes insane, and sometimes murderous. Yet
these films did not go further to assert that pornography is depraved and in–
evitably degrading to women. In several of his films, Almodovar does say
this. His film
Matador
(1986) expresses a negative view of bullfighting, and
the macho character of the national sport is identified with sexual violence,
through explicit association. But
if
Almodovar's intent was to attack pornog–
raphy, the gruesomeness of the media undercuts his message.
In
Dark Habits (Entre tinieblas,
1983), Almodovar's approach is suc–
cessfully comic.
It
is about eccentric and impoverished nuns who are inter–
ested in rescuing downtrodden prostitutes. The mood is of black comedy, but
throughout the nonsense we get disturbing glimpses of the prostitutes' des–
perate lives. Almodovar uses a garish style to develop some of the same
kinds of baroque polarities mentioned above.
In two more of his films,
What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Que he
hecho yo para merecer esto?,
1984) and
Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios,
1988), are variations
of the same subject. Both take place in Madrid and make use of slapstick. (I
would like to find a better word to convey the Spanish word "disparate,"
which is imprecisely translated as "absurdity" or "nonsense": it combines the
connotation ofa disrespectful overturning ofconvention with that of the shock
of a bullet's discharge.) The two women of the films are from different social
backgrounds, but both experience a series of confusions, exploitations, and
mishaps; in short, "disparates."
In
What Have I Done to Deserve This?
the wife supplements her hus–
band's income by doing cleaning in a karate studio. One evening she is lured
into a shower, where she is brutally raped. Wet and miserable, she lets go
with a few karate whacks, and then goes home and fixes supper for her
overbearing husband, mother-in-law, and two sons. As the opening portends,
she winds up knocking her husband dead with the karate stick. But before
this climax we are offered, throughout the film, a multitude of picaresque
episodes describing the ironies and incongruous conflicts in the lives ofa poor
urban family. For example, the younger, drug-addicted son is drilled by his
hopeful grandmother in a rigid homework assignment: to divide a list of au–
thors into antithetical categories:
romanticismo
or
realismo
-
a baroque
polarization which generally pervades the film. At the end, when the house-
