Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Javier Cámara | ... | Benigno Martín | |
Darío Grandinetti | ... | Marco Zuluaga | |
Leonor Watling | ... | Alicia | |
Rosario Flores | ... | Lydia González | |
Mariola Fuentes | ... | Rosa | |
Geraldine Chaplin | ... | Katerina Bilova | |
Pina Bausch | ... | Bailarina 'Café Müller' | |
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Malou Airaudo | ... | Bailarine 'Café Müller' (Dancer) |
Caetano Veloso | ... | Singer at party - "Cucurrucucú Paloma" | |
Roberto Álvarez | ... | Doctor Vega | |
Elena Anaya | ... | Ángela | |
Lola Dueñas | ... | Matilde | |
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Adolfo Fernández | ... | Niño de Valencia |
Ana Fernández | ... | Hermana de Lydia | |
Chus Lampreave | ... | Portera |
After a chance encounter at a theater, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny. Written by Anonymous
I think Almodovar is portraying a common male fantasy by portraying a Benigno obsessed and in love with a beautiful comatose woman. She is beautiful, sexually yielding, and doesn't have a functioning brain. In a way, it is like the Stepford Wives, where women are merely sexually attractive robots that do not possess any real intellect or consciousness, and certainly not the ability to refuse sex.