what have i done to deserve this ? ( que he hecho yo para merecer esto ? ) ( spain , 1984 * ) written and directed by pedro almodovar . cinematography , angel luis fernandez . art direction , pin morales , roman arango . editing , jose solcedo . music , bernardo bonezzi . cast : carmen maura , angel de andres-lopez , veronica forque , gonzalo suarez , chus lampreave , juan martinez , miguel angel herranz , amparo soler leal , luis hostalot . a tesauro and kaktus coproduction , released by cinevista . in spanish with subtitles . 100 minutes . no rating . pedro almodovar , who has been emerging in the 1980s as the naughty boy of spanish cinema , may baffle you with what have i done . . . , but he will also amuse you and instruct you . the film's mixed-genre is something that unsettles habitues of commercial spectacles . although our desire to classify what we see makes us wonder where exactly this movie fits ( from scene to scene--and within scenes --it swings from farce to drama and from comedy to tragedy ) , the unorthodox effects build up into a coherent absurdist whole , somewhat like a play by eugene ionesco . gloria is a woman in her thirties . she would be attractive were she not so harried . she lives in a cramped apartment within a monstrous low-cost housing development . co-existing around her is a gallery of individuals , each of whom is outrageous in a different way , each of whom is worked into the plots and subplots of the movie . there's antonio , the chauvinist pig taxi-driver husband who is hung up on german songs by zarah leander ( the darling of the nazi era ) ; who has a talent for imitating handwriting ; who once forged some letters of hitler to a mistress , when he ( antonio ) was a chauffeur in germany and sleeping with his lady employer . there's the older son who deals drugs and the younger son who goes to bed with his classmate's father . there's antonio's stingy old mother ( played with filmic effrontery by a young woman in opaque glasses ) who's hung up on sweets and mineral water ( " with lots of bubbles " ) and sells part of her stock to her son , as needed . across the hall is sexy cristal , gloria's only friend and a whore . another neighbor is a seamstress who hates her former husband and takes it out on her cherubic little girl . the child has telekinetic powers . if movies had a face , this one would have a deadpan expression . in a series of off-the-wall crises , the film proceeds imperturbably , treating the most outlandish or immoral events in casual fashion . ill-husbanded gloria , long on household slavery and short on household money , also works as a cleaning woman . she pops uppers to steady her nerves . as the picture opens , she has a sexual encounter of the last tango in paris school . later , one of her husband's fares who also happens to be one of cristal's clients , hires her for himself and his brother . the man is a failed writer whose wife is another failed writer as well as a kleptomaniac . he hatches a plot involving antonio and another nazi forgery . his brother , a psychiatrist who ought to be seeing a psychiatrist , counsels an impotent police inspector who is in and out of everyone's life . gloria lets a pederastic dentist adopt her junior son so that the youngster may have a better life . grandma adopts a lizard and baptizes him " money , " the most important thing in life . that's only part of the criss-crossings where each individual gets by hook , crook , or arbitrariness , involved with several others , but is hardly involved in any concern for others . it takes a while for us to sort things out in those concentric circles , to realize that the shifting center of the movie is gloria , to see that the main point is a feminist one about the still-unliberated woman in spain . women may have come a long way since franco died , but they still have a much longer way to go . almodovar , performer , cartoonist , writer and filmmaker , conducts his movie like a series of mad yet cool improvisations . what have i done . . . . may remind you in some ways of underground features , of the work of american director paul bartel , of gonzo journalism , of the dark humor of bunuel and other spaniards , but it is essentially an original work . the french new wave--by now old but staging a welcome comeback via contemporary imitators in britain and elsewhere--may also come to mind , with for example , almodovar's asides on top of asides . some of those are obviously relevant . others are indirectly relevant , like the very funny parodies of neo-hispanic tv commercials which comment on the ludicrousness of the media and the way they stultify the public . others yet ( like a man who makes car noises ) look like inventions that were too good to pass up--so why not throw them in ? as you watch this film , you may go through different stages , including one where you think that there's overkill , but keep going and the purposes of almodovar's exaggerations fall into place . paradoxically , as matters become increasingly surreal , social criticism becomes increasingly real . i will not reveal all the ins and outs of the plot , but when a hambone and police investigators get involved , not only does this in with the opening sequence in a " kendo " ( martial arts ) academy , but also with a once-famous black humor story by roald dahl , first printed in the new yorker magazine many years ago . * in keeping with its subject ( s ) , the film has provocative tastelessness at times , and always a voluntarily garish look , from the amateurish opening credits in strong , primary colors , to its defiant use of unsophisticated lighting set-ups . the closing shots of the building complex may or may not be a reference to godard's denunciation of soulless low-cost housing and living in his film one or two things i know about her . but anyone who knows european public housing will see the validity of those simple , emblematic images . in speech and deed , there's much bawdiness , with parodistic sex scenes and rabelaisian glee at bodily functions and references to them . the subtitles try much too hard to render the spanish slang into english slang , with unintentionally funny results and misspellings : you get sonny for sony , smak for smack , nitwuit , or cryptic things like " my j'ug . " what i have done is not a " finished " product by ordinary standards . i say this as a compliment to its convention-defying nature , to its maverick power , the method in its madness , and the consistently ironical view of a world which is askew . it is certainly one of the most interesting films shown in the us in 1988 . ------------------------------------------------------- review written in 1988 . * 1996 addenda : ( 1 ) many sources in us film guides give it erroneously a 1985 release date . ( 2 ) the roald dahl story and/or its main trick found their way into tv programs of the alfred hitchcock presents type , as well as in features . 
