Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

As part of their Saturday Midnight Movie series, the Uptown follows up Almodóvar’s Talk to Her with the first of his films with wide distribution outside Spain. 1988’s Verge is a black comedy about a woman whose lover has left and won’t tell her why. She tries to contact him throughout the day and ends up running into his new lover, his wife, a friend wanted by the police, and Antonio Banderas, who wants to sublet her apartment but ends up repairing her phone. A couple of wild taxi rides through Madrid, a unique gazpacho recipe, and Arab terrorists somehow work their way in as well. It’s very funny, in a twisted way, and foreshadows the over-the-top characters to come in Almodóvar’s future films.