Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón
Encyclopedia
Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón is a 1980
Spanish
film
, a campy comedy
, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
. Starring Carmen Maura
, Alaska and Eva Siva. The plot follows the wild adventures of three friends: Pepi, an independent modern woman; Luci, a mousy, masochistic housewife; and Bom, a lesbian
punk rock
singer.
Pepi, Luci, Boom is Almodóvar's first feature film. It was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35 mm for its theatrical release. It became a cult film
, emblematic of La Movida Madrileña
, a period characterized by a sense of cultural and sexual freedom.
Pepi, a young independent woman living in Madrid, is filling up her Superman sticker album when she receives an unexpected visit from a policeman who has spotted her marijuana plants from the street. Pepi tries to buy his silence with an offer of oral sex, but the policeman rapes her. This ruins her hopes of selling her virginity for a good amount of money. Thirsty for revenge, Pepi arranges for her friend Bom, a teenager punk singer, and her band, Los Bomitonis, to beat up the policeman. Wearing Madrilenian costumes and singing a zarzuela
, Pepi’s friends give the man a merciless beating one night. However, the next day Pepi realizes that they had attacked the policeman’s innocent twin brother by mistake.
Undaunted, Pepi decides on a more complex form of revenge. She befriends the policeman’s docile wife, Luci, with the excuse of receiving knitting lessons. Pepi’s idea is to corrupt Luci and take her away from the wife-beating policeman. During the first knitting class, Pepi’s friend, Bom, arrives at the apartment heading for the restroom in order to pee. This leads to the suggestion that, since Luci feels hot, Bom should stand on a chair and urinate over Luci’s face. Bom’s aggressive behavior satisfies Luci‘s masochism and the two women become lovers. Back home, Luci has an argument with her husband in which she complains about what he had done to Pepi. With a sense of liberation Luci leaves her husband and her home, moving in with Bom.
The three friends, Pepi, Luci and Bom are immersed in Madrid’s youth scene, attending parties, clubs, concerts and meeting outrageous characters. In one of the concerts, Bom sings with her band, the Bomitonis, a song called Murciana la marrana, (the Girl from Murcia; the sow). Luci becomes a proud groupie. The highlight of one of the parties is a penis size contest called General Erections, a competition looking for the biggest, most svelte, most inordinate penis. The winner receives the opportunity to do what he wants, how he wants, with whomever he wants. He selects Luci to give him oral sex, which makes her the most envied woman at the party.
Eventually Pepi is forced to find work as her father decides to stop her income. She becomes a creative writer for advertising spots designing ads for sweating, menstruating dolls and multipurpose panties that absorb urine and can double as a dildo. Pepi also begins to write a script which will be the story of lesbian lovers Luci and Bom.
The chauvinist policeman is desperately looking for his wife. Meanwhile he takes advantage of naive neighbor Charo, who is in love with Juan, his twin brother. Pretending to be Juan, the policeman sexually assaults Charo.
Finally, the policeman finds Luci coming out of a disco and kidnaps her from her two friends. He gives Luci a terrible beating that sends her to the hospital, where Pepi and Bom visit her. They quickly realize that they have lost Luci. She has decided to return to the person who mistreats her best – her sadistic and tyrannical husband. His brutality is what Luci has always wanted. Bruised and bandaged in her hospital bed, Luci tells Bom she is returning to him for a life of abuse. Bom is lost without Luci and laments that pop is also out of fashion. Pepi has the solution to both problems. Bom should move in with Pepi as her bodyguard and start singing bolero
s.
, Salome a short in 16 mm and a feature length film in super 8 Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim (1978) (Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim), none of which had a soundtrack.
The genesis of Pepi, Luci, Bom was a story written by Almodóvar called General Erections published in 1978 in the magazine El Víbora (The Viper). General Erections was a comic parody of the 1977 general elections in Spain
. The idea to take that story and develop it into a film was born out of his collaboration with the theatrical group Los Goliardos. Performing with them in a small role in Dirty Hands by Jean Paul Sartre, Almodóvar met Carmen Maura
and Félix Rotaeta, who encouraged him to make a film out of General Erections. Almodóvar rewrote the story and changed the title to Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap).
The initial budget was only 500 000 pesetas that Carmen Maura and Félix Rotaeta helped to collect. At the time, Almodóvar was working for Telefónica
, Spain’s national telephone company, as an administrative employee therefore the shooting took place on weekends with a group of volunteers. Without the backing of a studio, Almodóvar was forced to make extensive use of location shooting. The real life residence of gay pop artist painters Costus (Juan Carrero and Enrique Naya), who also appear in the film, served as the place where Luci and Bom set up their home.
The shooting was chaotic; it began in 1978 and lasted a year and a half. Due to the lack of financial means, it took an entire year to produce a film of only fifty minutes. This was insufficient for commercial distribution length. More money was needed and backing from Pepón Coromina, a Catalan producer, allowed Almodóvar to add thirty more minutes of film, shot over the following six months of 1980. The film was blown from 16 mm to a 35 mm format to allow its theatrical release. The crew lacked experience and the cameraman cut off some heads, particularly during the general erections contest scene. The long and chaotic shooting created problems in continuity. When filming started Olvido Gara was fifteen and by the time the filming wrapped she was seventeen. The first scene when Pepi goes to answer the door to the policeman was shot in June 1979, she opened it in December 1979 and they sat together in June 1980.
took the leading role of Pepi and Félix Rotaeta played the abusive policeman. Both were instrumental in having the film made. Maura was already an established actress, having found film success with Fernando Colomo
's Tigres de Papel. She became Almodóvar's reference actress in the first half of his career. Bom is played by Olvido Gara
, then a teenage punk
singer, who inspired the character she plays. Gara went on to take the artistic name of Alaska. She has enjoyed a successful artistic career as a singer, first in Alaska and Dinarama and later with Fangoria
.
Many actors that appear in minor roles went on to play more important ones in Almodóvar’s subsequent films: Kiti Manaver (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
) plays a hot-tempered, Andalusian rock singer; Julieta Serrano
(Dark Habits); Cecilia Roth
(All About My Mother
); Fabio MacNamara (Labyrinth of Passion
), a singer and painter, plays a transvestite Avon
lady;
Cristina Sánchez Pascual (Dark Habits) appears as a high-pitch bearded woman frustrated in a marriage to a homosexual, in a parody of Tennessee Williams
’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. Assumpta Serna
(Matador
) has a non speaking cameo, while Almodóvar himself appears as the host in the general erection contest.
.
Reviews in Spain were mostly negative, objecting to the film’s frivolity and vulgar humor. Pedro Crespo, in the conservative newspaper ABC, described the film a “merely a variation on the age old tradition of vulgar comedy transformed into a contemporary language”. Diego Galán, in El País, praised the film concluding that “We are in the presence of an astonishing and up to now, unique work. Almodóvar has made his first professional full length film and in so doing has undermined with the most respected taboos of our foolish society”. The Spanish newspaper El Periódico
, described Almodóvar as "a stubbornly passionate defender of substandard movies".
Pepi, Luci, Bom was released in The United States in 1992, only after Almodóvar became a famous art house film director. The reaction of American critics to the film was, on the whole, hostile. Pepi, Luci, Bom was generally rebuked for its thematic and formal inconsistency. Janet Maslin
in The New York Times
considered the film a “rough unfunny comedy notable for its bathroom jokes, humorous rape scene and abysmal home movie cinematography’. She found “its humor of a very adolescent variety… and plot turns that are better described than seen”. Critic Rita Kempley from the Washington Post
called it an “amateurish directorial debut, a smutty sexual sideshow most safely viewed in a full body condom”.
The film cost only 6 000 000 pesetas and made 43 000 000 pesetas in its initial release in Madrid. With its many Kitsch
elements, campy
style, outrageous humor, and open sexuality, the film became emblematic of a cultural movement of its time, La Movida Madrileña
. It amassed a cult following
and established Almodóvar as an agent provocateur
.
, All About My Mother
and Volver
, Pepi and Bom are self-sufficient, independent and their friendship is shown as more important that any sexual or love attachment. By contrast, men are either non-existent or presented unsympathetically like the policeman in Pepi, Luci, Bom; Raimunda’s abusive husband in Volver or Pepa’s unfaithful lover in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Although Bom and Luci form a lesbian couple, their story is ultimately less important than Pepi and Bom’s friendship. While the friendship of these two remains strong Bom’s and Luci affair ends when the latter returns to a heterosexual life of abuse with her husband.
Two scenes put Pepi and Bom's closeness in the foreground. Contrasting Luci’s troubled household, Pepi is presented cooking Bom’s favorite dish: Bacalao al pil pil. The film aptly closes with the two friends looking ahead to a new life shared together as roommates, helping to support each other. The film also takes on other themes frequent in Almodóvar’s filmography: sexual heterodoxy, drug addiction and a love of pop culture.
The amateurish presentation of the film and its crude humor also sets the film apart from the rest of Almodovar's filmography. Even in Labyrinth of Passion, Almodovar's subsequent film, comic elements are not presented so bluntly. By then, there was also a huge improvement in plot structure and filmography over his first film.
The film was plagued by financial and technical problems: Almodóvar claimed humorously that "when a film has only one or two, it is considered an imperfect film, while when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style. That’s what I said joking around when I was promoting the film, but I believe that that was closer to the truth.
Stylistically the film owes a debt to Paul Morrisey's first films and above all to John Walter
’s Pink Flamingos
. Almodóvar confronts the spectator with unexpected outrageous situations, including a lesbian golden shower
scene in the middle of a knitting lesson.
The technical and plot defects of the films are apparent, particularly when compared with Almodóvar's subsequent polished and complex works. However the film captured the spirit of its time, La Movida Madrileña, presenting Madrid
as an exciting city where anything goes.
The film centers on youth culture, showing it as wild, frivolous, adventurous and free from taboos. There is political symbolism in the right wing, old macho attitudes of the policeman, who represent the disappearing Francoist society and is presented unsympathetically. Pepi and Bom stand for Spain’s modern woman, the wild new face of a liberated democratic Spain. Luci is the self-sacrificing Spanish housewife, trapped between the old and new Spain. She is a masochist who yearns for the brutality of the past.
Blurring the limits of sexual identity, transsexual characters appear in many Almodóvar’s films. Here there is a drag queen
called Roxy, played by Fabio McNamara, Almodóvar’s singing partner in a glam rock parody duo.
The comic elements of the film defy good taste and are bluntly presented. Almódovar does not linger in the oddness of the sexual relationship between a traditional housewife in her forties and a rebellious punk teenager, which is presented without judgment as nothing out of the ordinary. Pepi, Luci, Bom is clearly an amateurish film; a first-time director, Almodóvar learned his craft as he made it.
, singing co-star of Jim Sharman
’s cult 1975 film the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The counterculture song “ Murciana”, written by Fabio McNamara, is prominently featured in the film, performed by Alaska and Los Pegamoides with a mixture of vulgarity and absurdity. The film closes with a Latin-American song Estaba escrito by Monna Bell
, a Chilean singer.
with English subtitles. It was released in The U.K as part of The Almodóvar Collection (Vol.1). The film has not been released on DVD in the United States.
1980 in film
- Events :* May 21 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released and is the biggest grosser of the year ....
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, a campy comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular...
. Starring Carmen Maura
Carmen Maura
Carmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned six decades, Maura is best known for her collaborations with noted Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.-Early life:...
, Alaska and Eva Siva. The plot follows the wild adventures of three friends: Pepi, an independent modern woman; Luci, a mousy, masochistic housewife; and Bom, a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
singer.
Pepi, Luci, Boom is Almodóvar's first feature film. It was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35 mm for its theatrical release. It became a cult film
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
, emblematic of La Movida Madrileña
La Movida Madrileña
La Movida Madrileña was a countercultural movement that took place mainly in Madrid during the Spanish transition after Francisco Franco's death in 1975...
, a period characterized by a sense of cultural and sexual freedom.
Plot
Pepi, a young independent woman living in Madrid, is filling up her Superman sticker album when she receives an unexpected visit from a policeman who has spotted her marijuana plants from the street. Pepi tries to buy his silence with an offer of oral sex, but the policeman rapes her. This ruins her hopes of selling her virginity for a good amount of money. Thirsty for revenge, Pepi arranges for her friend Bom, a teenager punk singer, and her band, Los Bomitonis, to beat up the policeman. Wearing Madrilenian costumes and singing a zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
, Pepi’s friends give the man a merciless beating one night. However, the next day Pepi realizes that they had attacked the policeman’s innocent twin brother by mistake.
Undaunted, Pepi decides on a more complex form of revenge. She befriends the policeman’s docile wife, Luci, with the excuse of receiving knitting lessons. Pepi’s idea is to corrupt Luci and take her away from the wife-beating policeman. During the first knitting class, Pepi’s friend, Bom, arrives at the apartment heading for the restroom in order to pee. This leads to the suggestion that, since Luci feels hot, Bom should stand on a chair and urinate over Luci’s face. Bom’s aggressive behavior satisfies Luci‘s masochism and the two women become lovers. Back home, Luci has an argument with her husband in which she complains about what he had done to Pepi. With a sense of liberation Luci leaves her husband and her home, moving in with Bom.
The three friends, Pepi, Luci and Bom are immersed in Madrid’s youth scene, attending parties, clubs, concerts and meeting outrageous characters. In one of the concerts, Bom sings with her band, the Bomitonis, a song called Murciana la marrana, (the Girl from Murcia; the sow). Luci becomes a proud groupie. The highlight of one of the parties is a penis size contest called General Erections, a competition looking for the biggest, most svelte, most inordinate penis. The winner receives the opportunity to do what he wants, how he wants, with whomever he wants. He selects Luci to give him oral sex, which makes her the most envied woman at the party.
Eventually Pepi is forced to find work as her father decides to stop her income. She becomes a creative writer for advertising spots designing ads for sweating, menstruating dolls and multipurpose panties that absorb urine and can double as a dildo. Pepi also begins to write a script which will be the story of lesbian lovers Luci and Bom.
The chauvinist policeman is desperately looking for his wife. Meanwhile he takes advantage of naive neighbor Charo, who is in love with Juan, his twin brother. Pretending to be Juan, the policeman sexually assaults Charo.
Finally, the policeman finds Luci coming out of a disco and kidnaps her from her two friends. He gives Luci a terrible beating that sends her to the hospital, where Pepi and Bom visit her. They quickly realize that they have lost Luci. She has decided to return to the person who mistreats her best – her sadistic and tyrannical husband. His brutality is what Luci has always wanted. Bruised and bandaged in her hospital bed, Luci tells Bom she is returning to him for a life of abuse. Bom is lost without Luci and laments that pop is also out of fashion. Pepi has the solution to both problems. Bom should move in with Pepi as her bodyguard and start singing bolero
Bolero
Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...
s.
Production
Pepi, Luci, Boom is Almodóvar’s first feature film. He had previously made only shorts in super 8Super 8
-Media and entertainment:* Super 8 mm film, a motion picture film format* Super 8 , a 2011 science fiction film* Super 8 , by Züri West* Super 8 * super8 * Super8, a DJ of the duo Super8 & Tab...
, Salome a short in 16 mm and a feature length film in super 8 Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim (1978) (Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim), none of which had a soundtrack.
The genesis of Pepi, Luci, Bom was a story written by Almodóvar called General Erections published in 1978 in the magazine El Víbora (The Viper). General Erections was a comic parody of the 1977 general elections in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. The idea to take that story and develop it into a film was born out of his collaboration with the theatrical group Los Goliardos. Performing with them in a small role in Dirty Hands by Jean Paul Sartre, Almodóvar met Carmen Maura
Carmen Maura
Carmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned six decades, Maura is best known for her collaborations with noted Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.-Early life:...
and Félix Rotaeta, who encouraged him to make a film out of General Erections. Almodóvar rewrote the story and changed the title to Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap).
The initial budget was only 500 000 pesetas that Carmen Maura and Félix Rotaeta helped to collect. At the time, Almodóvar was working for Telefónica
Telefónica
Telefónica, S.A. is a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider in Europe and Latin America. Operating globally, it is the third largest provider in the world...
, Spain’s national telephone company, as an administrative employee therefore the shooting took place on weekends with a group of volunteers. Without the backing of a studio, Almodóvar was forced to make extensive use of location shooting. The real life residence of gay pop artist painters Costus (Juan Carrero and Enrique Naya), who also appear in the film, served as the place where Luci and Bom set up their home.
The shooting was chaotic; it began in 1978 and lasted a year and a half. Due to the lack of financial means, it took an entire year to produce a film of only fifty minutes. This was insufficient for commercial distribution length. More money was needed and backing from Pepón Coromina, a Catalan producer, allowed Almodóvar to add thirty more minutes of film, shot over the following six months of 1980. The film was blown from 16 mm to a 35 mm format to allow its theatrical release. The crew lacked experience and the cameraman cut off some heads, particularly during the general erections contest scene. The long and chaotic shooting created problems in continuity. When filming started Olvido Gara was fifteen and by the time the filming wrapped she was seventeen. The first scene when Pepi goes to answer the door to the policeman was shot in June 1979, she opened it in December 1979 and they sat together in June 1980.
Cast
Carmen MauraCarmen Maura
Carmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned six decades, Maura is best known for her collaborations with noted Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.-Early life:...
took the leading role of Pepi and Félix Rotaeta played the abusive policeman. Both were instrumental in having the film made. Maura was already an established actress, having found film success with Fernando Colomo
Fernando Colomo
Fernando Colomo , is a Spanish film producer, screenwriter and film director. He has acted in small roles in his films and others.- Filmography :*1973 Mañana llega el presidente *1974 En un país imaginario...
's Tigres de Papel. She became Almodóvar's reference actress in the first half of his career. Bom is played by Olvido Gara
Alaska (singer)
Alaska is a Spanish - Mexican singer, dj, and TV personality famous in Spain and Latin America. She was of the main characters in the so called Movida the cultural movement following the Franco dictatorship in Spain...
, then a teenage punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
singer, who inspired the character she plays. Gara went on to take the artistic name of Alaska. She has enjoyed a successful artistic career as a singer, first in Alaska and Dinarama and later with Fangoria
Fangoria
Fangoria is an American magazine devoted to horror and exploitation films, which has a number of associated brands:* Fangoria Comics* Fangoria Films* Fangoria RadioFangoria may also refer to:* Fangoria , a Spanish electro pop band...
.
Many actors that appear in minor roles went on to play more important ones in Almodóvar’s subsequent films: Kiti Manaver (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a 1988 Spanish black comedy film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas...
) plays a hot-tempered, Andalusian rock singer; Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano Romero is a Catalan theatre and cinema actress. Her prolific career began in the 1960s, and she has worked with directors Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons.-Filmography:...
(Dark Habits); Cecilia Roth
Cecilia Roth
Cecilia Roth is an Argentine actress.Her father, Abrasha Rotenberg , a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Ukraine, is an editor and a journalist. He met Cecilia's mother, an Argentinian singer of Sephardic descent Dina Rot, in Argentina. Cecilia Roth has made appearances in numerous television series...
(All About My Mother
All About My Mother
All About My Mother is a 1999 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film deals with complex issues such as AIDS, transvestitism, faith, and existentialism....
); Fabio MacNamara (Labyrinth of Passion
Labyrinth of Passion
Labyrinth of Passion is a 1982 Spanish screwball comedy written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Starring Cecilia Roth, Imanol Arias and Antonio Banderas. The plot follows a nymphomaniac pop star who falls in love with a gay Middle-Eastern prince. Their unlikely destiny is to find one another,...
), a singer and painter, plays a transvestite Avon
Avon
-Rivers:*River Avon or Avon River , various rivers*Avon Water, a river in Scotland*Afon, the Welsh word for river, often anglicised to 'avon'-Canada:*Avon, New Brunswick, in the province of New Brunswick...
lady;
Cristina Sánchez Pascual (Dark Habits) appears as a high-pitch bearded woman frustrated in a marriage to a homosexual, in a parody of Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
. Assumpta Serna
Assumpta Serna
Assumpta Serna is a Spanish actress. She is known for her roles in I, The Worst of All portraying famous Mexican religious scholar Sor Juana, Nostradamus, The Craft, and Wild Orchid, although she may be most remembered for her role as Peninsular War guerrilla commander Teresa Moreno in the first...
(Matador
Matador (film)
Matador is a 1986 film by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar about a student matador, Ángel Jimenez , who confesses to murders he didn't commit. Themes include sex, death, and religion.- Plot :...
) has a non speaking cameo, while Almodóvar himself appears as the host in the general erection contest.
- Carmen MauraCarmen MauraCarmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned six decades, Maura is best known for her collaborations with noted Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.-Early life:...
- Pepi - AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
(Olvido Gara ) - Bom - Eva Siva - Luci
- Félix Rotaeta – Policeman/ Juan
- Concha Grégori - Charito
- Kiti Manver – model and singer
- Cecilia RothCecilia RothCecilia Roth is an Argentine actress.Her father, Abrasha Rotenberg , a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Ukraine, is an editor and a journalist. He met Cecilia's mother, an Argentinian singer of Sephardic descent Dina Rot, in Argentina. Cecilia Roth has made appearances in numerous television series...
– Girl in the panties commercial - Fabio McNamara (Fabio de Miguel) - Roxy
- Julieta SerranoJulieta SerranoJulieta Serrano Romero is a Catalan theatre and cinema actress. Her prolific career began in the 1960s, and she has worked with directors Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons.-Filmography:...
– Woman dressed as Scarlett O'HaraScarlett O'HaraScarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name... - Cristina Sánchez Pascual – bearded woman
Reception
The film premiered on 19 September 1980 at the San Sebastian Film festival in the section devoted to new directors. It later toured the independent circuits and then spent four years on the late night showing of the Alphaville Theater in MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
.
Reviews in Spain were mostly negative, objecting to the film’s frivolity and vulgar humor. Pedro Crespo, in the conservative newspaper ABC, described the film a “merely a variation on the age old tradition of vulgar comedy transformed into a contemporary language”. Diego Galán, in El País, praised the film concluding that “We are in the presence of an astonishing and up to now, unique work. Almodóvar has made his first professional full length film and in so doing has undermined with the most respected taboos of our foolish society”. The Spanish newspaper El Periódico
El Periódico
El Periódico is Spanish for "The Journal" and may refer to*El Periódico de Catalunya *El Periódico...
, described Almodóvar as "a stubbornly passionate defender of substandard movies".
Pepi, Luci, Bom was released in The United States in 1992, only after Almodóvar became a famous art house film director. The reaction of American critics to the film was, on the whole, hostile. Pepi, Luci, Bom was generally rebuked for its thematic and formal inconsistency. Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
considered the film a “rough unfunny comedy notable for its bathroom jokes, humorous rape scene and abysmal home movie cinematography’. She found “its humor of a very adolescent variety… and plot turns that are better described than seen”. Critic Rita Kempley from the Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called it an “amateurish directorial debut, a smutty sexual sideshow most safely viewed in a full body condom”.
The film cost only 6 000 000 pesetas and made 43 000 000 pesetas in its initial release in Madrid. With its many Kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
elements, campy
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
style, outrageous humor, and open sexuality, the film became emblematic of a cultural movement of its time, La Movida Madrileña
La Movida Madrileña
La Movida Madrileña was a countercultural movement that took place mainly in Madrid during the Spanish transition after Francisco Franco's death in 1975...
. It amassed a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
and established Almodóvar as an agent provocateur
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
.
Theme
The central theme of the film - female resilience, independence and solidarity - would be a constant throughout Almodóvar’s career, albeit better depicted in his later and more accomplished films. Like the female characters in Women on the Verge of a Nervous BreakdownWomen on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a 1988 Spanish black comedy film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas...
, All About My Mother
All About My Mother
All About My Mother is a 1999 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film deals with complex issues such as AIDS, transvestitism, faith, and existentialism....
and Volver
Volver
Volver is a 2006 Spanish dramatic comedy film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Headed by actress Penélope Cruz, the film features an ensemble cast starring Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, and Chus Lampreave...
, Pepi and Bom are self-sufficient, independent and their friendship is shown as more important that any sexual or love attachment. By contrast, men are either non-existent or presented unsympathetically like the policeman in Pepi, Luci, Bom; Raimunda’s abusive husband in Volver or Pepa’s unfaithful lover in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Although Bom and Luci form a lesbian couple, their story is ultimately less important than Pepi and Bom’s friendship. While the friendship of these two remains strong Bom’s and Luci affair ends when the latter returns to a heterosexual life of abuse with her husband.
Two scenes put Pepi and Bom's closeness in the foreground. Contrasting Luci’s troubled household, Pepi is presented cooking Bom’s favorite dish: Bacalao al pil pil. The film aptly closes with the two friends looking ahead to a new life shared together as roommates, helping to support each other. The film also takes on other themes frequent in Almodóvar’s filmography: sexual heterodoxy, drug addiction and a love of pop culture.
Genre
Among Almodóvar’s films Pepi, Luci and Boom, his first, is the one who takes more explicitly comedy as a genre. All the others incorporate elements of melodrama. The characters are shown as comic archetypes. Pepi is the independent witty modern woman. There is the nasty radical policeman. Bom is shown as a perverse rebellious teenager and Luci as the abused housewife.The amateurish presentation of the film and its crude humor also sets the film apart from the rest of Almodovar's filmography. Even in Labyrinth of Passion, Almodovar's subsequent film, comic elements are not presented so bluntly. By then, there was also a huge improvement in plot structure and filmography over his first film.
Analysis
The comic book origins of the film are evident in its loose structure, provocative vulgarity and the intertitles made by famous Spanish illustrator, Ceespe, then an unknown member of La Movida Madrileña.The film was plagued by financial and technical problems: Almodóvar claimed humorously that "when a film has only one or two, it is considered an imperfect film, while when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style. That’s what I said joking around when I was promoting the film, but I believe that that was closer to the truth.
Stylistically the film owes a debt to Paul Morrisey's first films and above all to John Walter
John Walter
John Walter , founder of The Times newspaper, London, was born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood....
’s Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...
. Almodóvar confronts the spectator with unexpected outrageous situations, including a lesbian golden shower
Urolagnia
Urolagnia is a paraphilia in which sexual excitement is associated with the sight or thought of urine or urination. The term has origins in the Greek Language .Those who enjoy urolagnia may enjoy urinating on another person or persons, or being urinated upon...
scene in the middle of a knitting lesson.
The technical and plot defects of the films are apparent, particularly when compared with Almodóvar's subsequent polished and complex works. However the film captured the spirit of its time, La Movida Madrileña, presenting Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
as an exciting city where anything goes.
The film centers on youth culture, showing it as wild, frivolous, adventurous and free from taboos. There is political symbolism in the right wing, old macho attitudes of the policeman, who represent the disappearing Francoist society and is presented unsympathetically. Pepi and Bom stand for Spain’s modern woman, the wild new face of a liberated democratic Spain. Luci is the self-sacrificing Spanish housewife, trapped between the old and new Spain. She is a masochist who yearns for the brutality of the past.
Blurring the limits of sexual identity, transsexual characters appear in many Almodóvar’s films. Here there is a drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
called Roxy, played by Fabio McNamara, Almodóvar’s singing partner in a glam rock parody duo.
The comic elements of the film defy good taste and are bluntly presented. Almódovar does not linger in the oddness of the sexual relationship between a traditional housewife in her forties and a rebellious punk teenager, which is presented without judgment as nothing out of the ordinary. Pepi, Luci, Bom is clearly an amateurish film; a first-time director, Almodóvar learned his craft as he made it.
Soundtrack
The film opens with the song “Do the Swim” by Little NellLittle Nell
Little Nell may refer to:* Nell Campbell , Australian actress, club owner and singer* Nell Trent, fictional heroine of Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop...
, singing co-star of Jim Sharman
Jim Sharman
James "Jim" Sharman , the son of boxing tent entrepreneur Jimmy Sharman, is a director and writer for film and stage with over 70 productions to his credit...
’s cult 1975 film the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The counterculture song “ Murciana”, written by Fabio McNamara, is prominently featured in the film, performed by Alaska and Los Pegamoides with a mixture of vulgarity and absurdity. The film closes with a Latin-American song Estaba escrito by Monna Bell
Monna Bell
Monna Bell , whose birth name was Nora Escobar, was a Chilean singer who enjoyed a successful career in Spain, Mexico and other parts of Latin America. She was reportedly one of Juan Gabriel's muses. Bell was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1938...
, a Chilean singer.
DVD release
Pepi, Luci, Bom is available in Region 2 DVD in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with English subtitles. It was released in The U.K as part of The Almodóvar Collection (Vol.1). The film has not been released on DVD in the United States.