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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780794203917
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0794203914
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 09, 2003
Running Time: 101 minutes
Sales Rank: 45003
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: March 30, 1985
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Pedro Almodóvar scored his first international hit with What Have I Done to Deserve This?, cementing his reputation as Spain's bad-boy director of darkly comedic melodramas. Many of the themes that dominate Almodóvar's later films are evident here, especially his sympathetic affection for downtrodden women like Gloria (Carmen Maura), an exhausted housewife who's addicted to No-Dōz tablets and spends 18-hour days cleaning apartments and tending (just barely) to her teenage sons (one deals drugs, the other offers sex to local perverts), neglectful husband, and looney-tunes mother-in-law--all of whom have a particular knack for getting on her nerves. Toss in a prostitute neighbor, an accidental murder, and a pet lizard named 'Money,' and you've got the makings of a soap opera by way of Luis Buñuel and John Waters, served up with Almodóvar's distinctive blend of compassionate humanity and kinky outrageousness. --Jeff Shannon
Description:
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Definitely Worth Watching
One reviewer has reassured me that I was not alone in one experience here. After I'd seen the whole thing, parts that didn't make sense came into focus. That's a very enjoyable experience. In between, it's manic and clever and just fun. It's very different from the usual Hollywood fare, and it's wonderful.
Rating: - Quirky Pedro Almodovar flick!
This is one of Pedro Almodovar's earlier efforts from the 1980's and it is weird and quirky and funny! I loved seeing it again after all these years!
[...]
Rating: - Una familia dysfunctionala
Black comedy doesn't necessarily have to be "about" anything in particular: it really just needs to express a certain cynicism (healthy or not) about contemporary life and culture. Pedro Almodovar's earliest films have often been described in such terms, but I'm not entirely sure that's correct. Absurdist, to be sure, skeptical--if not completely cynical--certainly, but even at his bleakest, there is a basically loving spirit on display. He shows genuine affection for his characters, even the ones who don't seem to actually deserve it (the chauvinistic husband in this film, for instance, is still shown as a basically principled and decent-in-his-way sort).
It may well be that Almodovar's affection for, as well as his compassion toward, his characters is what grounds his absurdist comedies and what serves to make them more "grey" than completely "black." I've read that he refuses to pronounce judgment on his characters, no matter what kind of trouble they create for themselves or others. One senses that much in this relatively early film (his first international success). Individual viewers may draw their own conclusions (as we all do in real life) about individual characters in the film. I find it a strong point, rather than a weak one, that different viewers will come away from this film with differing impressions of the dramatis personae.
One of Almodovar's favorite leading ladies Carmen Maura appears here as the harried working class housewife Gloria, who's struggling ... Read More
Rating: - Shocking
Is this for bloody real? This is one weird family. Almost like the real, modern day Addams Family. Granny charges her own son for water. Son is a chauvinistic pig. A family living above poverty but way below comfortable. Sadness hidden behind daily lives of the people next to us
Rating:  - Another Jewel in Pedro Almodóvar's Crown!
Though the films by one of our geniuses of filmmaking in our times, Pedro Almodóvar, is making films now that are polished to perfection - Volver (2006), La Mala educación (2004), Hable con ella (2002), and Todo sobre mi madre (1999) - his early films such as this one '¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!' in retrospect contained all the identifying marks that would establish him as not only one of the bad boys of cinema, but also one of the sensitive cinematic psychologists. And everything he touches gleams.
In this 1984 story of a wildly dysfunctional family co-habiting in Madrid, the star is Gloria (Carmen Maura), a No-Doz addicted maid living in a tiny flat with her taxi driver/forger husband who perseverates on an aging German chanteuse for whom he once worked, two sons - one a hustler and the other a drug peddler - and a wacko mother-in-law who treats food like contraband, selling what she chooses to the family members. The turning point in this raucously fragile but funny family is the chance to make money: the father is coerced into forging Hitler's memoirs with a little help from his German chanteuse's influence,
Gloria bargains with a dentist for her hustler son's possession, ad infinitum!
But leave it to Almodóvar to pull it all off with just the right amount of madness and mayhem, and a jolly dollop of psychology about family interaction and women thrown in for good measure. The cast is a delight (including Almodóvar regulars Cecilia Roth and Verónica ... Read More
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