崩溃边缘的女人

Author: Coconuttree666, a Chinese student who wants to be a serendipper in film studies and capture a kaleidoscope of colors in each frame

崩溃边缘的女人 (1988)

7.8

1988 / 西班牙 / 剧情 喜剧 / 佩德罗·阿莫多瓦 / 卡门·毛拉 安东尼奥·班德拉斯

The 1988 movie Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown movie, directed by Pedro Almodóvar Caballero, is described in the academia as highly stylized with the “colorful characters, vertiginous plotlines and rich intergeneric allusions” (Acevedo-Muñoz, 2006, p. 173). Just as West (2013) stated, Almodóvar is among those filmmakers who insert personal experiences as motives and features within their films. Although tons of critics have discussed the film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, I intend to specifically underline two idiosyncratic attributes of it in this film blog, namely the color and the references to Hitchcock’s work, within the biographical context of Pedro Almodóvar.

To start with, as the artistic director Antxón Gómez observes, “Pedro works with a very definite range of colors. He has trouble working with white, for example. He always says, ‘I don’t understand black and white.’” According to Oliva (2009), the recognizable use of color constitutes a dominant trademark in Almodóvar’s movies, frequently acting in concert with a neo-baroque aesthetic style that is prominent in Hispanic culture. From my point of view, the most astonishing aesthetical achievement in this film should boil down to the various outfit of the leading actress, Pepa Marcos cast by Carmen Maura (see the screenshots below).

In terms of semiology, the color can function as a signifier, which will denote deeper significance namely the signified, the process of which helps us to deconstruct the film as an aggregation of signs. In the first several scenes featuring Pepa, she is wearing a gray suit, which signifies professional and formal; yet after she feels extremely disappointed at her relationship with Iván, the frequent show-up of the color red could manifest that Pepa is the woman “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”, except for once she chooses to wear a blue suit pairing with a white shirt with black polka dots when she needs to be the adult for solving Candela (Maria Barranco)’s problems when seeing the feminist lawyer, where blue delivers a sense of calmness and intellect here (it can be somehow interestingly confusing with the same color constructing different meaning-making —— Candela, the character who represents irrationality and obtrusion, also wears a blue outfit when she shows up in the film for the first time). Furthermore, it is demonstrated by Oliva (2009) that the distinctive understandings of colors of Almodóvar might be triggered by his mother, Francisca Caballero, who made many cameos in his films before her death in 1999; as “bookish” as he could be, Almodóvar shows a sense of sensitivity through repeatedly claiming that his unlimited passion of narrative in the form of colorful visual compositions comes from his mother ——

As he said in a speech: “I like to think that my passion for color is not merely a function of the baroque style of my characters, but that it is also my mother’s answer to so many years of mourning, in which black was the dominant color. I was her extravagant reaction to the stultifying and excessive tradition of La Mancha (where Almodóvar grows up —— from the author)”.

…

“My mother was the territory where everything happened. I learned boldness from her, and something more: the need for certain doses of fiction so that reality can be better digested, better narrated, better lived… It was not a question of complacently accepting things, but of perfecting reality by adding a little bit of fiction.”

According to Zurian (2013) that when Almodóvar was eight, his family moved to Orellana la Vieja, a village with few traces of modernity, where he received the primary education under the religious supervision; at 17 he came to Madrid but never enrolled in the Official Film School since it ceased giving classes and gradually closed, then Almodóvar became an assistant in Telefónica, the national telephone company. Albeit lack systematic cinematic studies, he seems to be capable of expressing himself without any established rules; in the universe of narrative and film, his family, especially his mother seemingly leads him to a bigger illusionary world full of vivid colors that are conveying complicated connotations.

Moreover, it seems to have become a consensus in the sphere of film critics that Hitchcock should count as the primary textbook of Almodóvar, aesthetically and industrially; you can still tell new traces of the presence of Hitchcock in the form of appropriation in Almodóvar’s movies after accomplishing global success (Acevedo-Muñoz, 2007; Kercher, 2013).

Brill (1988) contended that many characters in Hitchcock’s films are victims of the inevitable and fatal traps of their past; conversely, Acevedo-Muñoz (2007) specifically argues that Almodóvar’s approaches are based partly on the unstable genre as a metaphor for national identity through direct quotations of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, but as a therapy to damage the social diseases from cultural and religious repression in Franco’s Spain.

For instance, at the end of Women on the verge, Pepa ultimately reach some emotional firmness when facing Lucía, the crazy mother, who also actively asks to be taken back to the mental hospital after the failed attempt to kill her ex-husband, which is allegorical of the nation’s process of recovery; therefore, Almodóvar determined to establish stability and positivity out of the melodrama’s natural chaos by making the women exactly be “on the verge” of insaneness, just as the title reads. To sum up, he is trying to pass the positive message that the national trauma could be cured ultimately, or at least offset by presenting that the negativity can be, “paradoxically, a redeeming force”, as Almodóvar himself mentioned in an interview: “I don’t want to let even the memory of Francoism exist in my films”.

(Word count: 942)

References

Acevedo-Muñoz, E. R. (2007). Melo-Thriller: Hitchcock, Genre, and Nationalism in Pedro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. In D. Boyd & R. Barton (Eds.), After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality (pp. 173-194). Texas: University of Texas Press.

Allinson, M. (2001). A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar. London: I.B.Tauris.

Brill, L. (1988). The Hitchcock Romance: Love and Irony in Hitchcock's Films. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kercher, D. (2013). Almodóvar and Hitchcock: A Sorcerer’s Apprenticeship. In M. D’Lugo & K. M. Vernon (Eds.), A companion to Pedro Almodóvar (pp. 59-88). Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.

Oliva, I. (2009). Inside Almodóvar. In B. Epps & D. Kakoudaki (Eds.), All about Almodóvar: a passion for cinema (pp. 389-445). London: University of Minnesota Press.

Townson, N. (1988). The Spanish Labyrinth. New Statesman & Society, 1, 40.

West, D. (2013). A companion to Pedro Almodóvar. Choice, 51(4), 644.

Zurian, F. A. (2013). Creative beginnings in Almodóvar’s work. In M. D’Lugo & K. M. Vernon (Eds.), A companion to Pedro Almodóvar (pp. 39-59). Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.

帮睡眠袜找的资源，进了迅雷之后又几十种字幕可供选择，但有些字幕跟声画对不上。

有的时候还满震惊的，因为找的资源标题就是西语一时间我都不知道自己在看什么电影，问了睡眠袜然后我就知道了原来我又在看西班牙花衬衫胖子拍的电影。

问了名字之后对于电影剧情容易接受了一些。不然的话我一开始是没法接受这些电影里的女的都这么疯疯癫癫的。刚看到上映年份竟然是我小学英语老师的出生年份。

看得还蛮震惊的，我带着一种猎奇的眼光在看（如果有侮辱到是我的不对），首先是是女主的朋友在多次想向女主倾诉自己的难处而女主不理她的时候想去跳楼引起女主注意，还有女主情夫的前妻化的妆，很神奇，眼睫毛竟然是直接画在眼皮上的，不知道这是剧情设定说她是精神病所以大家都不在意，还是说你在西班牙打扮成什么样都没关系。我不能理解的原因可能是因为我不够开放，我比较东方人的内敛（东方人：请不要碰瓷。），如果我有难事，我想让我朋友听听，而她如果不在意或者自己也自顾不暇，我会二话不说马上闭嘴然后离开，所以女主的朋友非要女主听听自己的trouble，并且女主顾不上管她她就要跳楼引起注意这个让我很震惊，但我会尊重这个的。而且当女主终于来听她的诉求的时候，她首先是非常轻松地讲自己美妙的性经历，这里我也很震惊，我以为你要讲的事情应该是火烧眉毛非常紧急的， 没想到要讲这么多相比之下无关紧要的事吧。不过女主也没有不耐烦的样子，好像这也是很重要的，还是说她了解她朋友，我也不知道。虽然我不理解但我尊重这个。

其次是女主，她看起来好像有躁郁症，动不动就发怒，可能是因为怀孕了所以脾气不好吗，把床单烧了，把电话扔出窗外，把她情夫的明信片和照片撕毁。还有她情夫的前妻，拿着一把枪，威胁别人。真的好神奇。

而且里面的关系也挺混乱的。我一个字都不想相信情夫说的，电影一开始他就在沾花惹草，对各种女人，真的是各种女人，各大洲的各人种的， 说一句尬死人的情话，然后女人们就迷得神魂颠倒。所以情夫可怜巴巴地跟女主说话的时候我也丝毫不心疼他。我觉得他们很搞笑的就是，事先电联工作不做好，非要到住处去找人，一旦那人不在又像后面有鬼在追一样的赶紧离开，到底他吗的有什么好急的，好不容易都来这了，根本就是低效率……反正男女主互相找对方结果每次都擦肩而过看得我急死了，这个是不是叫皇帝不急太监急。而且女主怀着她情夫的孩子还跟情夫的儿子接吻，这可以说是小妈文学吗，可是小妈肚子里怀着你的亲弟弟。而且情夫儿子真的很喜欢乱搞，明明有未婚妻，还跟女主朋友搞上。已经显露他爸爱沾花捻草的性格了。

整个电影里面的颜色和布置都很花哨。女主家的阳台，我看到地上有一个皮球，我以为是幼儿园，我以为她在拍画报或什么之类的，布景好像很小，很虚假，给我一种《圣山》的感觉，好像那种小孩子游乐园。颜色很天真无邪又很劣质，是一种不加克制的极度使用。还有角色穿的衣服和妆容，外国人就是比较敢穿吧，估计真的是穿什么都没人说你，可能那个环境就是对穿着打扮很放松很自由的。还有女演员们的眼影，各种颜色的都有，尤其是女主情夫的儿子的未婚妻，我看她的眼影好像是外围一圈棕黄色（比棕黄色淡一点），然后里面是紫色，还有渐变，蛮好看的。

阿莫多瓦和他的女人们 刚看了阿莫多瓦的崩溃边缘的女人。他是个高产的导演，也是个很独特和有趣的人，因为选取角度里有女性主义这一角度，那么我想选择阿莫多瓦来写是再合适不过的了，我看过的他的几部作品里都和女性主义息息相关，崩溃的女人是个喜剧片，里面有个关于女性主义的桥段，里面有一个做律师的女权主义者（女性和女权是一个概念，一个单词的两种译法），女主向通过她来帮助自己的受难的女性朋友，但是这个女权律师因为其中牵扯到了当下社会政治问题（阿拉伯什叶派人士在西班牙计划恐怖袭击）而冠冕堂皇地回绝，以免引火上升，女主随即掌掴这位伪女权律师，西班牙人本身就比较奔放，阿莫多瓦这样的西班牙艺术家就更加不羁率真，加入了这么一段夸张戏谑的桥段，直接告诉观众他的立场，西方人旗帜鲜明，一翼孤行，左右分明，我不喜欢你们这些伪女权，也给银幕外的所有主义，运动中的投机分子一个响亮的耳光。 活色生香里也不予余力的批判了家暴问题，不过不是落后的二元对立式的角度看待问题，这片的人物关系处理的很好，他很会写群戏，一步一步展示了一群人如果因爱生恨，这个恨史如何传递，引发复仇导致一对老夫妻的毁灭，一对恋人的延迟成全，一个男人的自我救赎，其背后的批判指向了那段历史这个社会，这个制度，谈到性，就像房思琪的初恋乐园里，戴锦华老师的书评一样“所有的性侵事件都是整个社会共同参与的”，因为这个男孩出生在大独裁弗朗哥执政时期的一辆公车上，这个公车本身就充满了象喻，他的母亲是个生活贫苦又充满母性的妓女，他的出生被报纸媒介大肆渲染，把个人命运和国家命运联系起来，而他的犯罪也是替罪，提老警察承担罪行，这是对警察制度的批判，阿莫多瓦又给了我们一个很温情乐观的结局，有情人终成眷属，孩子在私家车上降生，父亲在对胎儿说话，大意是那段糟糕的时候已经过去了，你出生在多么幸福的一个环境，这片子是1997年的，孩子父亲的年纪是26，也就是说这段历史是指西班牙的70年代左右，正是西班牙政权更替的一个时刻，弗朗哥死去，西班牙民主迅速建立，经济开始恢复发展，国运的转变和极权的存亡息息相关，类似于古巴的国运和卡斯特罗的死去一样，片子的最后把一切都指向了一点上，导火索是“处男的戾气”，而性压抑是一个社会氛围的反应。就像现在说要像爱护眼睛一样爱护环境，这些年的现代化发展把环境破坏了，集体视力下降了（昨天看新闻还说全国的近视率40%，有6亿人，中国学生的近视率全国第二，现在在图书馆里的景象告诉我是这样的，新闻难得没骗人）摘取了自然的视网膜。 性和政治是完全相关的，好像是福柯提出的观点，看北岛的蓝房子里写过一段话，性是个人的政治，政治是公开的性，无数的作品里可以印证这一观点，颐和园里猛烈的性当然是必要的，政治压抑，性动荡，政治混乱，性混乱，就像现在的人滥交一样，米兰昆德拉写生命不能承受之轻的时候处于捷克的苏共掌权时期，民不聊生，欲望压抑，人与人相互倾轧，性是唯一可靠的，就像看权力的游戏里有句台词，你想要公平就去妓院，而不是法庭，性与政治，太多可将，公权力和私权利，女权主义当然是世界潮流，逆之者亡，女权主义的旨意或者说 初衷要改变不平等的权力结构，改变性政治的局面，国内搞女权，当然是有点异化了，因为绕开政治闭口不谈，充耳不闻，视而不见，任何的运动都是需要勇敢者的，女权主义者自身需要足够的自省和内心，不然容易成了精神化妆品，而中国的男权社会更不用说了，男性中心主义大山，和社会结构完全一致，因为现在是泛政治化的时代社会坏境，你如果不谈性政治，可能是无知，可能是懦弱，可能是自欺。女权主义是普世的，跨种族跨国界跨国界，戴锦华是当今世界三大问题：性别，阶级，种族，三项都占，怎么能不是世界潮流，论其独特性，自扫门前雪，谈中国的女权问题，最迫切的是中国的女性参政问题，你看看每年看两会的时候的男女比例就知道了。