While the movie's plotline defies simple recapitulation, at its hub is found the thirtysomething charwoman Gloria (Carmen Maura) and her unending angst with her workaday existence. She's addicted to over-the-counter stimulants as a result of trying to make do for the fiercely dysfunctional brood with whom she shares a Madrid high-rise tenement apartment. Her loutish husband Antonio (Angel de Andres Lopez), a cabbie and amateur forger, keeps a tight rein on the family finances, and his dotty mother (Chus Lampreave) keeps her own provisions under lock and key. Her two adolescent sons give her little solace; the eldest employs his natural business acumen to deal heroin, and the youngest is given to homosexual dalliances with his friends' fathers.
Gloria's one sounding board is her neighbor Cristal (Veronique Forque), a vivacious hooker who's not above asking Gloria to act as spectator in order to meet the needs of a voyeuristic client. As the film progresses, the life threads of these characters and many others equally as flaky (including a hard-drinking, failed literary couple; an impotent cop; a neighbor whose abused daughter manifests telekinetic powers) intersect in remarkably unpredictable fashion, as Gloria strives to cope with her bleak circumstances. At one point, she matter-of-factly turns guardianship of her youngest over to the family's pederast dentist in settlement of the bill.
As nasty as these circumstances seem in cold print, Almodovar's ability to leaven the dreariness with mordantly absurd wit, coax very human responses from his players, and keep it all moving at such a unique tempo lets him deftly walk the line between the appalling and the appealing. The wonderfully expressive Maura, a fixture of the director's films of the '80s (Law Of Desire (1987); Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (1988)), never strikes a false note in convincingly conveying Gloria's consuming desperation. Forque's bubbly, uninhibited performance is also engaging.
Wellspring offered up a clean, superior mastering effort on its print of What Have I Done To Deserve This?, presenting the film in 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen and providing audio tracks in both Dolby 2.0 stereo and Surround 5.1. The supplemental materials could have been more robust, as only a Almodovar filmography and weblinks to the official Almodovar site and Wellspring.com fill out the package.
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