An amazing performance by Cecilia Roth (a sort of Spanish Anne Bancroft) lights this curious but effective cross of Pedro Almodóvar's usual sexually frank material with the kind of old-fashioned flavoursome romance favoured by Claude Chabrol.

Manuela (Roth) has a baby by a husband who later becomes a transsexual and leaves her. Seventeen years later, after her son is killed by a car, Manuela embarks on a voyage of memories and self-discovery.

The outcome is obvious from the third reel but, though not for the easily shocked, the film is buoyed by a string of ingratiating performances, its atmospheric background music and a strong narrative thrust that enables us to overlook the inevitability of the story.

Won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.