Directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
With Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano.
Spain, 1988, 35mm, color, 89 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.

Undergraduate and graduate students from across the university have been collaborating with the HFA in the curation and organization of screenings since 2021. Aimed principally at a campus-wide student audience, they have also been available to the entire Harvard community, and now these screenings are open to the general public.

HFA Director and AFVS Senior Lecturer Haden Guest serves as faculty supervisor and works with students interested in learning the art and craft of film programming. This is an inclusive space for Harvard students to work directly with the HFA’s collection and staff to create a weekly film series held in the theater.

Mix one part Doris Day-Technicolor frivolity with a dash of Nicholas Ray's Technicolor melodrama, shake with an ample portion of screwball comedy, and update the film's location to Madrid circa 1988. The result is this farcical hit comedy by Pedro Almodóvar. Soap star Pepa (Almodóvar favorite Maura) is losing her mind because her lover Iván is leaving her. Iván's wife goes on a gun-toting rampage when she finds out. Meanwhile, Pepa's friend Candela needs a place to hide because she has unwittingly fallen for a Shiite terrorist. At Pepa's, she meets Iván's son Carlos (Banderas), whose fiancée has been drugged by Pepa's Valium-laced gazpacho. Confusing? Absolutely, but how can you resist a film where kindly grandmothers make the nightly news and the mother of a notorious killer endorses detergent? – from Movie Love: Almodóvar and his Inspirations, Fall 2004