Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

How are Spanish speaking women interactions with men within the same culture?


The women in this film are very subservient to their men. I view Pepa, Carmen and Candela all trying to please the men in thier lives. Even, Lucia, who obviously has mental issues, wants to please the men, especially Ivan, who obviously treats them as objects and uses them for his own pleasures. The film portrays the women as feeling they are nothing without their men. I find this difficult because I have such a different view of relationships with men in my life, especially my husband. We are equal partners, but I do not need him. I am self sufficient.

Of course this film was set in the 1970's but it was released in 1988, certainly not in times that were not modern. This film made me laugh because it was so outrageous in the relationships between men and women.

Do you find differences between women in the film and today's Amernican women?


Obviously, today's American woman is much more self sufficient and they do not need men. I can speak for myself as an American woman. I work, usually more than 40 hours a week. I go to school,obviously. Cooking, cleaning and child rearing are assumed that it is a shared responsibility between my husband and myself. Since my children are older, I also expect that they help around the house.

If my life was a comedy, I probably would not throw my phone, break glass, spike my meals with barbituates, but I may get a few laughs...enjoying my husbands and daughters company, not antagonizing them by stalking them.


What could have been different in the film if the context was the U.S.?

As above, I believe that the film would have had hillarious moments of the women being the equal to the men in the movie and not being beneath the men. I could imagine that in the scene of Pepa burning the bed that maybe she would be imagining that she was burning up Ivan and Lucia. As a unmarried pregnant female, I think that she would find a lawyer that might get even with Ivan, financially, instead of feeling that she was alone and having to bear the burden of pregnancy on her own. Perhaps when Ivan's son was womanizing everyone in the film, there could have been a scene that all of the women would have tied him up and taken advantage of him.

My impression of this film's plot?

I believe that this film was very funny. The plot of a mistress being pregnant by her lover who was previously married to a psychopathic woman, and the man continues to be a womanizer is not a prevalent plot for most movies in the U.S. However, I thought it was cleverly done.

Do you think there is a difference among women from Spanish America and Spanish Europe?

The women in this film seemed very sophisticated. The young women, like Carmen and older women like Pepa and elderly women, Lucia were different than women portrayed in films like Machuca and La Misma Luna. The women in those films were very into their families unlike the women in this film. Of course, those films dealt with a more serious theme, this film showed women in a different role than previous movies that we have viewed.