Women On A Nervous Breakdown

There were a few elements that stood out from the majority of the film such as the use of simplistic shots, and the color red during the murder scene. The overhead shot of Raimunda washing dishes cleaning a knife focuses on just that. This shot is revisited the second time she is washing Paco’s blood off of the knife. Red in this scene signifies blood and the end of innocence. Paula’s shirt was striped red and white until Raimunda told her to change her clothes. The next time we see Paula she is in a solid red shirt and her innocence is gone. By this point, Paula experienced Paco’s advances killed him then had to admit what it is she did ultimately will change her forever. Whereas Raimunda was already in a solid red article of clothing which I believe was Almodovar’s say of subtly showing the same happened to her by her father and that her innocence is long gone. Watching white paper towels progressively become blood-soaked symbolizes the …show more content…
This isn’t the first time that Almodovar had worked on a piece that centered around women, he did the same thing in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. At the beginning, it appears as though women are the cleaners and men are the workers. Opening with the tombstones cleaning scene there were many graves and many people, but no men. The first man that we see is Emilio stacking chairs at his restaurant, then Paco who got laid off that day which still makes it clear that he is a working man. Although, it seems at the beginning that the gender roles will be followed it is broken once the short montage of Raimunda working her three different jobs occurs. One simple moment that speaks to the odd relationship between men and women comes when Emilio drops off the keys and sees blood on Raimunda’s neck which she shrugs off calling it “women troubles”; if she is referring to her period as a woman that would even confuse me but this had a double maybe even triple