Pedro Almodovar's 1984 dark comedy "What Have I Done to Deserve this?" disappoints in many respects. The most glaring is when this film is compared with the series of masterpieces he would go on to spawn. This film, though, is far from a masterwork, as it flows through the very chaotic goings-on in a particular apartment building in Madrid without a map. The main focus of the film is on a dysfunctional family, which consists of a the cleaning woman mother with the pill-popping addiction, the negligent taxi driver husband, the drug selling teenage son, the young son with a prurient interest in older men, and the most quirky of them all might be the grandmother with the mineral water stash and the pet lizard. None of this prepares the viewer for the prostitute neighbor or the abusive mother with the daughter that has unknown paranormal powers. There's a lot of other craziness going on, as well, but unfortunately the film flows without very much of it coalescing.
