Kika (1993)

There probably aren't many film directors who can tackle the subject of rape, head on, and manage to get a laugh. Well I think Pedro Almodóvar just about manages that here thanks to an amiably strong performance from the eponymous make-up artist (Verónique Forqué). We first meet her when she is drafted in by her lover "Nicholas" (Peter Coyote) to dress the corpse of his son "Ramón" (Àlex Casanovas). What might have helped would have been for the young man to actually be dead! Next thing, he is proposing to her - unaware of the thing with his dad - and they are living together. Happy ending? Well no, because it turns out that his mother killed herself - or did she? Star of red-top television "Scarface" (the super-hammy Victoria Abril) lives across the road and when not cavaliering around on her motorbike dressed like a mobile outside broadcast truck, she is rather voyeuristically filming from her terrace and finally, there's the horny porn star "Pablo" (Santiago Lajusticia) whose record is four times consecutively and who knows how he likes to eat an orange segment. It is maybe just that the whole film's dark comedy is in such shocking bad taste that it sort of works. There's a vague mystery underpinning the thing, but essentially this is just a chance for the over-the-top Forqué to present a character that takes the rise out of the excesses of femininity and masculinity quite engagingly. Her life is a mess, but it's a quirky mess and it's her's! Indeed, just about everyone's life here is a bit a shambles and I found it quite fun as we wade about through them all. It's a bit rough around the edges, and Coyote isn't the best, but it is an eclectic character study that I quite enjoyed.