What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Pedro Almodóvar's 1984 film What Have I Done to Deserve This!? is as much as a mouthful as it is to say as it might be to entirely summarise. The sheer extravagancy of the title, which is '¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!' in Spanish, echoes the broad and rather open canvas on which the breakthrough Spanish director paints his portraits and the fates of an equally rather disparate group of Spaniards tumbling out of Franco's Spain. The setting is 1980s Madrid, the capital of a nation that has since come out of a political reign of a definitive sort and is now on the brink of ending three quarters of a decade under a fresher, freer political situation. This as the film covers two groups, indeed families or classes, whom have progressed out of the old times and into the new ones. As a whole, the film works as a somewhat sly comedy and pays substantial attention to Spain as a nation by way of its capital city and those that inhabit it.The film opens with a collection of odd, colourful titles which is in direct contrast in terms of basic codes and conventions to the activity going on behind it; that being of a martial art variety in which shouting and the flinging around of wooden poles as a dozen or so people twist and turn in perfect unison is played out. Gloria (Maura), a middle-aged cleaner whom works at the recreation hall in which these people practice, reenacts what she observes in what is a rare moment during which we see her doing something that seems planned, ordained and conclusive. This fleeting moment of control and rhythm we see her engage in is in stark contrast to her chaotic home life, in which she must contend with two teenage sons whom are either homosexual or dealing drugs in their spare time; a brute of a husband, named Antonio (López), who wants to be with another woman but when he is with Gloria, makes love to her despite close family members being in near proximity as well as a mother-in-law named Abuela (Lampreave), who comes with her own quirks.What Have I Done to Deserve This!? works as a character piece exploring the women in the film such as Gloria, her mother-in-law and neighbour Cristal (Forqué), who's additionally a prostitute. Most of the women in the film are good-natured and tend to lean more towards helping and aiding others as they stick together, their existence playing out amidst men, or indeed male characters, of whom are deeply flawed in their characteristics and attitudes as domestic violence; confusion over sexuality; paedophilia; drug infused lifestyles and infidelity are the majority of characteristics they embody.Despite the sheer level of characters in the film, Almodóvar does a credible job in balancing the right amount of both introduction and progression required for each person. Antonio, for instance, is established to have known a German woman who was someone that was into Nazi memorabilia, but whom he drove around as a chauffeur many years ago and developed a bond with anyway. This, followed by scene in which he reiterates the importance of one's signature on a level with one's surname to one of his sons; an exchange in which the aim is to evoke a sense of individualism and identity, that you are one amongst the rest and ought to be proud of who you are. The link to the woman affiliated with the aforementioned woman is still fresh and sets up a relatively unnerving sense about Antonio, something that additionally arises later on to do with forgery of a German manuscript.The characters in What Have I Done to Deserve This? walk rainy, grey and unwelcoming Spanish streets; the film is shot in a manner that acts as an anti-thesis to how tourists view Spain. The majority of the people in the film are poor; indeed Gloria's dysfunctional family we zero in on for the duration of the film turn to counterfeiting and drug dealing to sustain an income. Next door, Cristal entertains a number of male clients; one of which very early on is a supposedly well-off writer whose financial situation doesn't seem as desperate as everyone else's, but this doesn't, in any way at all, elevate him above those of Gloria's family as his infidelity and ideas of a criminal nature play out.The film, in the nicest possible way, feels like three or four going on at once. There are moments, indeed a number of premises, which you feel would make films all by themselves; situations that Almodóvar could flesh out even more than what he does. This echoes what he does in his 2006 piece entitled Volver, in which three women come about a series of bizarre incidences but just seem to act around them rather than act because of them. Almodóvar does this as a director; keeping everything as low key as possible as content of a pretty disturbing nature such as the murder of one's partner and a drug dealing teenager just seems to 'happen' around this housewife and middle aged woman who lives in a crazy, mixed up world. Almodóvar doesn't exploit these things for sake of cheap laughs, instead opting to point out that these problems contained within Spain's society are still prominent, regardless of what positives one might take out of it being a decade on from Franco's regime. The film operates as a rather black comedy, as a somewhat stripped down drama with its fair share of powerful moments and as an interesting case study between classes and gender.

With this film, John Waters and Pedro Almodovar,whether they were aware of it or not, showed how close in sensibility they were to the sheer zaniness of family dysfunction -- at times, the incidents of Almodovar's WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS nearly mirrors the incidents of Waters' POLYESTER in the fact that it's a hilarious and often wicked portrayal of a Spanish family having a spectacular meltdown full of crazy while the housewife tries to maintain hers at all costs. Gloria (Carmen Maura), the housewife in question, has an addiction to No-Doz pills. Her husband Antonio (Angel de Andres Lopez) works as a taxi driver and has a plan involving the forgery of Hitler's diary. Gloria has two sons -- neither on a good path, one being a pusher, the other a prostitute. Her meddling mother (Chus Lampreave), a female neighbor and friend who also works as a prostitute (Veronica Forque), and a weird little girl who lives upstairs with her control-freak mother (Kiti Manver) add to the convoluted mess that soon is out of control and treading some rather risky grounds. However, Almodovar clearly made this movie as a way to express an irreverent sensibility of overblown urban dramas just before he exploded unto cinematic consciousness in his internationally acclaimed WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. Like the early films of Waters, this is his way of giving the entire film and TV community the finger -- watch how he uses Cecilia Roth in a coffee commercial or how he casts himself and another man to play the part of man and woman in a video called "La Bien Pagá". Cheeky and quirky, indeed.

I really wanted to like this movie a lot more than I did. That's because I love wacky foreign comedies--particularly the strange ones that catch you completely by surprise. However, although this one frequently caught me by surprise, these were almost never pleasant surprises. It reminded me of South Park in that nearly EVERY social norm was violated until the only ones left to broach were too sick to be funny. For example, after exploring adultery, drug abuse (of nearly every sort--ranging from pot, heroin, speed to glue sniffing), prostitution, S&M, suicide, murder, etc., the movie got to the hilarious(?) topic of pedophilia. Mom encouraged her one son (who looked about 12 years-old) to sleep with neighboring men. In fact, at one point in the movie she gives this boy to the dentist in lieu of payment for dental work! Funny?! You've got to be kidding. This movie just goes too far and delves into the "black hole of comedy". What should they make fun of next, cancer or rectal tumors?

This is not my first Pedro Almodovar film...though I will claim it to be the first in which I was not really rallying for the heroine or any of the lead characters. What have I done to deserve this?? is based around a cleaning woman and her dysfunctional family, whose eccentric habits and dog-eat-dog attitudes to one another, leaves you curious as to what will take place next...but also robs you of any compassion that you wish to place on any of the central characters. In Almodovar's later films, the characters are -likewise- often carrying imperfections and/or secrets that make them one-of-a-kind individuals, but there is usually something integral in the plot or in the way the actor conveys him/herself that endears you and persuades you to root for them (as the underdog(s). My disappointment with this film is that there was no such investment to be made with this family. If you love Almodovar, this film is certainly full of his cryptic views on life, so it is well worth a viewing. The film veers as more a depressing comment than to the black comedy it intended to be.