Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Both men in the film, Ivan and Carlos, are similar. Neither of the characters are faithful to the woman that they are with, nor are they completely honest with them. Carlos isn’t nearly as bad as his father. He falls in ‘love’ with Candela while his fiancée is sleeping off the spiked gazpacho. Candela tries to stop his attention, but he persists. She isn’t comfortable with the way he is acting towards her while he has a fiancée. It is obvious that Carlos isn’t in love with his fiancée, but he doesn’t want to tell her. This may be because he doesn’t know if he will be able to find anyone else that will care for him. If Marisa had been awake, Carlos never would have acted that way towards Candela. Ivan is another story. He never seems to be happy with any woman. Pepa knows that he has been cheating on her lately. I think it’s quite likely that he had always cheated on her. His history speaks for itself. While he was with Lucia he was seeing Pepa. I don’t know what would make her think that he would be faithful to her.

While the telephone is functioning it provides a means of communication between people. While Pepa is waiting for the call from Ivan and while Candela is trying to reach Pepa there is a sense of loneliness and desperation because the characters aren’t getting what they think they need. I think it’s interesting that many of the discussions need to take place in person rather than over the phone. Pepa shouldn’t be telling Ivan about her pregnancy over the phone nor should Candela be relating her Shiite terrorist story through a phone. Both situations need the attention and support that come from talking face to face. The lack of telephone parallels the isolation that the characters feel. They don’t think that anyone can possibly understand and they almost feel vindicated within their beliefs when they are partly cut off from society.

Many of the women in this film are “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. Things aren’t going favorably for the characters and they are becoming increasingly frustrated. This frustration is manifesting itself in irrational behavior. I think that many of these problems are represented in The Disenchantments of Love. Lucia is like all the main characters, who at one point or another, suffers from love sickness. She is convinced that Ivan is the love of her life and she doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that her love is unrequited. Pepa can be compared all the characters who create plan after plan to try to get what they want, only to realize that it isn’t what they want after all. The only difference is that Pepa realizes her mistakes before it all ends badly. Candela could replace any of the naïve characters which believe that men won’t use them, only to be devastated when they do. Candela managed to avoid their fate of death because she had help from people who care about her.