Kika is a 1993 Spanish language Pedro Almodóvar film starring Verónica Forqué as the title character.
Plot
Kika (Veronica Forqué), a young, bubbly aspiring actress turned cosmetologist, is called to the cottage of Nicholas Pierce (Peter Coyote), an American freelance writer who has moved to Spain to write about game hunting, to make-up the corpse of his stepson, Ramón (Alex Casanovas), before notifying the authorities. The circumstances of Ramón's "death" are rather suspicious, but Kika does not raise an issue of them and performs her work on Ramón. It turns out that he is not dead, and is actually catatonic. He is revived by Kika's attentions; soon after Ramón tells her the story of his life: he is a lingerie photographer who hasn't coped with the suspicious death of his mother, for which he blames Nicholas (since he was the last person to see her alive, and since he has since read his mother's diary, in which Nicholas is portrayed as abusive). Feeling empathic to Ramón, and in part turned on by the whole experience, she decides to move in with him.
While living with Ramón, Kika has a secret affair with Nicholas. She feels sorry for Ramón, but is turned off by his constant melancholy moods. To complicate things, he has to evade the constant intrusive gaze of tabloid-TV star -and Ramon's former psychologist- Andrea Caracortada ("Andrea Scarface", played by Victoria Abril), who is also a former lover of Nicolás', and who stalks him since they broke up. Andrea, who wears costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier on and off the air, has become obsessed with obtaining morbid topics for her tabloid TV show (one of them shows live footage of a woman being killed at a cemetery at gunpoint, an incident taken almost verbatim from a similar incident that occurred near Miami on the mid 1980s, where the killing of a Cuban-born woman by her estranged husband was filmed by a television crew). She assumes that hanging around Ramón and Nicholas will eventually lead to some juicy news item.
Kika's friend and part-time maid (Rossy de Palma) is the sister of Paul Basso (a pun on polvazo, which means "great fuck" or "big ejaculation" in Spanish slang), a former porn actor with a low IQ who has just escaped from jail. Paul received a good conduct leave, and attended the Good Friday procession at San Vicente de la Sonsierra, a small town in Spain renowned for having penitents, commonly called "Los Pica'os" ("The Cut 'Uns"), self-flagellate during the event. Disguised himself as a penitent (complete with white, hooded robes, typical of some religious ceremonies in Spain), Paul escapes custody and takes shelter at his sister's workplace. Kika happens to be sound asleep in one of the rooms of her friend's house. After asking his sister for money and manhandling her breasts (Paul has sexually molested his sister for years, and she has become a lesbian) he notices Kika, lying in bed while wearing no panties. He then rapes her while she's asleep. She wakes up, and notices Paul on top of her. She wants him to leave.
An anonymous tip to two clumsy police officers leads them to investigate the rape while it is taking place. By the time they reach the place, Paul is being pulled off Kika by two people while she's still holding on to him. He unlocks himself from her, goes to the roof of the building, and masturbates to relieve himself while Andrea is coincidentally entering the building, various stories below. A drop of semen falls in her face.
Kika, who is humiliated by the experience, relives her humiliation once more when Andrea gets a hold of a videotape featuring her rape by Paul and shows it on her television show, and plans to leave the city for good.
(this is just the first half of the movie)
Music used
Perez Prado's "Concierto para Bongó" serves as background music for some scenes, including the Pica'os self-flagellation scenes, a car chase and Kika's rape scene (when replayed in television by Andrea). Tite Curet Alonso's song "Teatro", as sung by La Lupe, is the film's musical theme.
External links
- Kika at the Internet Movie Database
- Kika, Pedro Almodovar - official website
- Kika at Rotten Tomatoes
- Janet Maslin, Kika (1993) - Another Sly, Dizzy Romp With Pedro Almodovar, NYTimes, May 6, 1994
- Almodovar's Kooky Tale of Sensationalism, Literature, & a Woman named Kika, Epinions.com
- Kevin Thomas, Almodovar's 'Kika': Freewheeling Parable, LATimes, May 6, 1994
- Kika at Box Office Mojo
