WOMEN ON THE VERGE

In honor of the new Almodóvar movie about to hit Alamo screens, you can use your advance ticket to an opening weekend screening of THE SKIN I LIVE IN to get in FREE to any screening of WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN or BAD EDUCATION at the Alamo South Lamar.

Pepa (Carmen Maura) is distraught and it’s easy to see why: Not only has her lover, Ivan, abandoned her with nothing but an unfeeling message on the comically large answering machine, but she’s also pregnant. So Pepa does what any sane person would do to calm their nerves. She makes up a big batch of garden-fresh gazpacho laced with sleeping pills. But with so much going on, she forgets to drink it. You see, her apartment is a hectic place where everybody seems to be bringing their troubles. Her friend Candela is going on about her recent lover who not only abandoned her but then turned out to be a Shiite terrorist. Ivan’s ex-wife from before Pepa is a crazy lady with six shooters in her handbag and she won’t leave Pepa alone either.  There is also a dorky, yet strangely dashing young man (Antonio Banderas) wandering around the apartment with his bitchy fiancée (Rossy de Palma). The young couple is full of secrets: Like the fact that she’s never had an orgasm, and that she snuck into the kitchen and chugged some of the gazpacho she found in the fridge, and that he is actually Ivan’s son. There's also fire, police, and attempted suicide. As melodramatic as this all sounds, WOMEN ON THE VERGE is really a frantic joy-ride with the 80s-era Almodóvar.