Almodóvar, heavily armed with his standard pots of garish color, but otherwise rather toned down. The tone, in fact, is quite uncertain: not quite light, not quite serious either, a bit salacious, a bit melodramatizing, totally uncommanding. The filmmaker takes little from the original Ruth Rendell novel: the wheelchair and the title, though not even the meaning of the title. He takes nearly as much from his illustrious compatriot, Luis Buñuel: selected clips from The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz on TV; one of the female leads of That Obscure Object of Desire (Angela Molina); the grandson of the male lead of Nazarin and Viridiana (Liberto Rabal, grandson of Francisco Rabal). He takes scarcely an atom, however, of either's genius. One bolt of inspiration: Francesca Neri savoring the lingering smells of her extramarital lover before turning on the shower to wash them away. With Javier Bardem. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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