alr

What Have I Done to Deserve This?
(Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?)

Screening on Film
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
With Carmen Maura, Luis Hostalot, Ángel de Andrés López.
Spain, 1984, 35mm, color, 101 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
Print source: Filmoteca Española

Almodóvar’s fourth film perfects the mix of satire, melodrama, irony and farce that characterize his earliest internationally successful comedies that followed. Its title a lament from its beleaguered housewife protagonist, What Have I Done… follows the woman’s hilarious attempts to deal with an abusive husband, a drug-dealing son, a disapproving mother-in-law and a rogue’s gallery of neighbors. This razor-sharp ensemble comedy satirizes the influx of consumerism that swept into Spain following the end of the dictatorship, while offering a rich character study of a woman, like a Fassbinder heroine, trapped between stultifying tradition and a banal present.

Part of film series

Read more

Early Almodóvar

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

Read more

Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow