Metrograph

Almodóvar’s first feature, a landmark of the exuberant, insouciant La Movida Madrileña counterculture that exploded in Spain after the end of Franco’s fascist dictatorship. Based on a fotonovela that Almodóvar published in an underground zine and shot for peanuts on 16mm stock, the film follows the misadventures of three Madrid women: Pepi (Carmen Maura), a layabout who becomes an overnight success in the advertising world; Luci (Eva Siva), a housewife who discovers her hidden masochistic side; and Bom (Alaska), the lesbian punker who teaches Luci to find her pleasure in pain. The scandalous, scrappy, and often hysterical opening barrage of a brilliant career, and the beginning of one of the great collaborative efforts in ’80s cinema, between Almodóvar and his effervescent muse.