Independent Films, Film Profiles

High Heels (film)
by Pedro Almodóvar

High Heels (Spanish: Tacones Lejanos) is a 1991 melodrama Spanish film , written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar and starring Marisa Paredes,Victoria Abril and Miguel Bosé. The plot follows the fractured relationship between a self-involved mother who is a famous torch song singer and the grown daughter she had abandoned as a child. The daughter, who works as TV newscaster, has married her mother's ex-lover and has befriended a female impersonator of her mother. A murder further complicates this web of relationships.The film has the feel of other mother-daughter melodramas like Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life and particularly Autumn Sonata, which is quoted directly in the film.Rebeca, a TV news broadcaster, is at Madrid’s airport anxiously awaiting the return of her mother whom she has not seen since she was a child. Her mother, Becky del Páramo, a famous torch song singer, is coming back to Spain after a fifteen-year stay in Mexico. While waiting, Rebeca recalls a holiday incident, which took place in 1972, when Becky bought Rebeca a pair of earrings and told her that she looked very pretty, the child and mother embraced. Shortly afterwards however, Rebeca found herself separated from the adults; when they found her, her stepfather jokingly suggested that she be sold to the locals. A second incident occurred two years later at home in Madrid. When Becky revealed her intentions to pursue her career in Mexico, her husband opposed her plans. Rebeca then engineered her stepfather's death by replacing his stimulants with tranquilizers just before he drove off so that he would die and leave his wife free to live her life. The girl’s expectation that, after her stepfather’s death, her place in her mother’s heart will be assured was soon dashed by Becky's decision to travel to Mexico alone, leaving the daughter behind under the care of the father. For fifteen years Rebeca has longed for her mother to come back and for the love and affection of which she had been deprived. Nevertheless, her love is accompanied by a deep resentment.Rebeca has since become a newsreader for a private television station owned by her husband Manuel. The reunion of mother and daughter is even tenser because Manuel was many years ago one of Becky’s lovers. The night of her return, Becky, Rebeca and Manuel have supper and then go out to see Letal, a female impersonator of Becky. For sometime, Rebeca has been coming to see the show whenever she misses her mother. Backstage Rebeca helps Letal to remove his costume. Kneeling in front of him as she helps him undress she is impressed by his manliness. Letal takes advantage of the situation and they make love. Manuel, who no longer loves his wife, foolishly wants to sleep with Becky again and divorce Rebeca.A month later Manuel; is murdered in his villa. He had spent the evening first with his mistress Isabel, who is the sign language interpreter of Rebeca’s words on the news, and then with Becky who, having become his lover again has learnt he had another mistress and had come to announce it was over between them. It was Rebeca who discovered the body. The investigating magistrate, Judge Dominguez, centers his suspicions on the mother and daughter whose relationship he knows has not recovered since Rebeca found out Becky was seeing Manuel.On the day of Manuel’s funeral, while reading the news of his death, Rebeca confesses to the murder live on television. She is immediately imprisoned but the investigating judge seems desperate to prove her innocence despite all the evidence. Becky makes her return to the Madrid stage while Rebeca spends her first night in prison. In jail, she listens on the radio to a triumphant Madrid concert performance of her mother who dedicates her first songs to her. Paula, the social worker, takes a special interest in Rebeca, like her, she is heartbroken, grieving the lost of Hugo, her boyfriend. A nude picture of Hugo that Paula carries with her makes Rebeca thinks that Letal and Hugo are the same person. The judge arranges for Becky to see her daughter, and Rebeca now denies the murder of Manuel. Mother and daughter confess to each other their lack of love, their jealousy, and their secrets. Rebeca draws a comparison between herself and the daughter in the film Autumn Sonata in which the girl’s mother, an outstanding pianist, ask her to play the piano and then humiliates her by telling her how to improve her performance. Rebeca suggests that she too has always felt inferior to Becky and forced to compete with her, winning only once by marring Manuel. But even this victory was finally denied her, when Becky started an affair with Manuel. If Rebeca’s desire to be closer to Becky led her, fifteen years ago, to murder her stepfather, it also played some part in her murder of Manuel, whom she sees as ousting in her mother’s affection. The extent of Rebeca’s fixation and the limitlessness of her adoration are too much for Becky’s frail heart and her condition worsen. Back in prison, Rebeca discovers she is pregnant – carrying Letal’s child. At once, the Judge releases her from prison but without any fresh evidence.Rebeca goes to see Letal’s final drag performance and in the dressing room discovers that he is the judge, Letal being one of the Judge’s disguises and Hugo being another. He explains that his dressing up was not more than an investigative strategy and, knowing about her pregnancy, asks her to marry him. As Rebeca struggles to take this in, they see a TV broadcast relating Becky’s sudden heart attack. They rush to the hospital. Rebeca confesses to her mother the murder of Manuel, and Becky decides to take the blame in order for her daughter to go free. Becky accuses herself of the murder and when she is taken home to die, Rebeca gives her the gun and Becky leaves her fingerprints on it, thereby incriminating herself and establishing Rebeca’s innocence. When Rebeca sees the high heels of the women passing in the street, she tells her mother the sound of the heels from a distance reminds her of her mother coming home when she was little. She turns around and realizes her mother has died while she was talking.