A ravishing tale of romantic obsession, loneliness and friendship, Almodóvar’s exceptional drama explores the bond forged between two men, who under tragic circumstances become caregivers for two women both trapped in a coma.

Lydia (Rosario Flores) is a bullfighter afraid of snakes. Marco (Darío Grandinetti) is the man who loves her, and though their love remains unconsummated, he sits loyally by her bedside after a raging bull leaves her in a coma. When Benigno (Javier Cámara), a sexually confused male nurse advises Marco to talk to her, his advice is born from experience. For the past four years he's been talking to Alicia (Leonor Watling), a young ballet student who is in a coma following a car accident. She is the object of his obsession, which began the moment he first saw her rehearsing whilst looking out of his apartment window. When the two men strike up a friendship - their respective stories emerging through flashbacks - both respond to their common fate in different ways; Marco, utterly distraught at the loss of Lydia, whereas the dysfunctional Benigno seems almost blissful in his tending to Alicia, who is fully, unresistingly, his.

Emotionally, this is a film on a knife-edge. With moments when you don't know whether to laugh, gasp or sigh as the lives of the four characters flow in all directions, past, present and future, urging them towards an unexpected destiny. His least stylised, yet most accessible work, it’s arguably Almodóvar’s finest film. At once, funny, compassionate, engaging and deeply touching, to watch it is to realise what a master filmmaker Almodovar is.

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