I was astounded to learn that Jean Cocteau was involved in the making of Almodovar's film. (I am sort of a Cocteau fan by marriage — I had a big thing in college for Raymond Radiguet, Cocteau's genius boy lover who wrote two French masterpieces and died at age 20).
Here's an interesting excerpt about the Cocteau play that inspired "Women." The whole thing is here.
Jean Cocteau's one-act play, La Voix humaine [The Human Voice], consists entirely of a monologue by a woman engaged in a final phone conversation with her lover. Alone in her room, she desperately clings to the telephone as her only link to the man who has left her for someone else. Although this agonizing portrait of abandonment and despair bears little resemblance to Almodovar's multi-charactered comedic romp through the streets of Madrid in Mujeres al horde de un ataque de nervios [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown], Cocteau's play has been named as the source of inspiration for that film. In various interviews Almodovar has explained that his original intention had been to adapt the play to the screen, but due to its brevity, he needed to expand the material to feature film length. This led him to devise a story of the forty-eight hours leading up to the phone call.
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Pepa gradually achieves what critics have called an "emancipation from machismo" and an "inner liberation from a phallocentric past," resulting in her ultimate rejection of Ivan's renewed interest in her in the penultimate scene (Jessup 299; D'Lugo 65).
Noir and George, this sounds like what you said. You should write for Film Quarterly. hehe
That is an interesting article, as is the Cocteau connection. Instead of debasing a perfectly good English word, Hutcheon should have coined a new one. But what do you expect from those damn theorists anyway. They’ve been needing a good thrashing for years. Although badly named, that is the right concept for the film. I’d like to see Cocteau’s play.
I think that sums up Pepa’s trajectory well. Unlike Noir Muse, I wasn’t waiting for Pepa to take a stab at Ivan at the end. But is the article right that they never talked at all on the phone and only exchange messages?
Yeah, they never actually spoke to each other on the phone. They just left messages. And Pepa, of course, used the phone for a stand-in punching bag for Ivan a couple of times.
There is a lot of phone talking in the movie, though. It seems like everyone at some point or another is shown talking on the phone.
Are you referring to trans-contextualizes? That word made me gag, too, but the analysis is sound.
Actually I was thinking “parody” which is a short, sturdy, and useful English word that should be kept out of the clutches of the likes of Hutcheon. As for “trans-contextualize”, that is one of those longish, low-density Latin constructs that theorists probably mutter in their sleep. It bothers me not at all since it poses no threat to good usage. Hutcheon should have coined something as awkward and forgettable. My advice is to quit swallowing such sawdust and you will no longer gag.
I liked the analysis too.
So we missed a beat by not doing a thread about phones and phone calls?
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