What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) on Netflix
In Madrid, Gloria cleans houses and takes pills to keep going while money is short. She shares a small apartment with her taxi-driving husband, her mother-in-law and two teenage sons.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.1/1012,224 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
Gloria works as a cleaning lady to keep her family afloat and takes amphetamines to get through the day. Her husband Antonio drives a taxi and forges letters; the couple argue over the rent, the telephone and the heating. Antonio's mother lives with them and longs for her native village. Their fourteen-year-old son Toni deals heroin to save money for a farm, and twelve-year-old Miguel sleeps with older men. Years earlier Antonio drove in Germany for the singer Ingrid Müller, and when he mentions the Hitler letters he once copied for her, the writer Lucas proposes forging Hitler's diaries. Two neighbors share the building: Cristal, who is a prostitute, and Juani, whose daughter Vanessa has telekinetic powers. A lizard Toni and his grandmother bring home gets the name Dinero.
Cast
- Ryo Hirumaas Profesor Kendo
- Juan Martínezas Toni
- Sonia Hohmannas Vanessa (as Sonia Anabela Holimann)
- Diego Carettias Chico anuncio
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Almodóvar set the film in the Colmena de la M-30 residential blocks along Madrid's M-30 motorway, buildings he had noticed and been drawn to years before shooting. He drove past them daily while working at a Telefónica warehouse near Fuencarral, struck by the "enormous beehives that rise above the highway".
- What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Almodóvar's fourth film, was the first of his works to be released theatrically in the United States, premiering to sold-out crowds in the New Directors/New Films series, co-sponsored by the New York Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art's film department.
- It was critically much better received than Almodóvar's three previous films and put him on the movie map in America as a major talent to watch.
