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It’s only February, yet The Criterion Collection has already released two exceptional screwball comedies this 2017. The first, His Girl Friday, released last month (and reviewed by David Blakeslee here), is a film that comes to mind whenever the term “screwball comedy” is bandied about. The second is Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Almodóvar, particularly at this early point in his career, was better known for dark comedies that did all they could to confront and provoke and remind everyone that with the demise of Franco’s regime Almodóvar intended to utilize a newly discovered freedom of expression, so the film’s provenance, combined with the film’s dark premise, means that the delirious, escalating light comedy of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown will come as a surprise (a pleasant surprise, I think) to first-time watchers familiar with the rest of Almodóvar’s work.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 855

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 39.95

Starring Carmen Maura, Fernando Guillén, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma, María Barranco, Kiti Manver, Guillermo Montesinos, Chus Lampreave, Yayo Calvo, Loles León, Ángel de Andrés López, José Antonio Navarro.

Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine

Film Editor: José Salcedo

Original Music: Bernardo Bonezzi

Produced by: Augustin Almodóvar

Written and Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Connected film festival attendees learned about Pedro Almodóvar before everybody else, especially if they had an understanding of new developments in Spanish cinema. Film school had shown us nothing but the very exceptional work of Luis Buñuel, most of which is really from Mexico and France. In the 1980s we Angelenos were just getting access to films by the old-school ‘traditional’ rebel Spaniards Carlos Saura and Juan Antonio Bardem.

Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Pedro Almodóvar‘s Academy Award-nominated Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios / Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) will become a Broadway musical, Lincoln Center Theater has announced. To be directed by Bartlett Sher, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown will have book by Jeffrey Lane, and music and lyrics by David Yazbek. The cast includes de’Adre Aziza, Nikka Graff Lanzarone, Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Mary Beth Peil and Sherie Rene Scott. Previews will begin Oct. 2. The musical will open Nov. 4 at the Belasco Theatre. Almodóvar’s classic comedy starred Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Rossy de Palma, Maria Barranco, and Julieta Serrano. Photo: El Deseo...

Have you heard the news that Pedro Almodóvar's comedic 1988 classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the film that first won him a major following in the Us and his first trip to the Oscars, is going to become an English language TV series for Fox?

Pass the gazpacho!

When I read the headlines I felt like I had downed a pitcher of glee. Smashing news, especially since Almodóvar himself is producing. But ... then I read the fine print. There's always fine print.

Apparently it's Not a comedy but a "suburban drama" (huh?) And it's about women who've known each other a long time (what? no complex comedic interweaving of strangers?) And it's being written by a Grey's Anatomy writer? (oy!) This doesn't sound anything like the movie and it sounds way too much like a soapy redux of Desperate Housewives. Next thing you know we'll be...