What Have I Done to Deserve This (film)

Plot

The film is a slice of a housewife's life in 1980s post-Franco Madrid. Gloria lives in a small and cheap apartment with husband and two teenage children: the declared homosexual Miguel, whom she sells to the dentist, and the drug-dealing Toni. Her husband, Antonio, longs for a German woman for whom he was a chauffeur in Germany before he married Gloria.

Gloria's eccentric mother-in-law, a frugal and unhappy woman who hides her madeleine cakes, is another addition to Gloria's household. Cristal, a prostitute who lives nextdoor, is Gloria's best friend. Juani, a dressmaker in the same apartment block, has a daughter with telekinetic powers.

In his taxi Antonio meets the writer Lucas. They connive a plan to make a book with forged letters by Adolf Hitler. Lucas travels to Berlin to meet Ingrid Müller, Antonio's former girlfriend who can help them with this book. The suicidal Ingrid telephones to Antonio. This leads to a quarrel between Gloria and Antonio. When he assaults her in the kitchen, she kills him with a ham leg. Her mother-in-law's lizard Dinero ("Money") is the only witness to the crime. Gloria successfully evades the investigators and is never tied to the murder.

Her mother-in-law moves back to her birth village and takes Toni with her. Gloria, left alone and depressed, wants to throw herself off the balcony. She changes her mind when her son Miguel returns and says he wants to take care of her.

Cast