Almodóvar won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for this 2002 film, a detour for the director in its focus on masculine bonding, conspicuously in the presence of women silenced by circumstance. Male nurse Benigno and journalist Marco are brought together under bizarre but curiously similar circumstances via their shared obsessive devotions to two separate women, both comatose. Lines are continually blurred between reality and fantasy, benign intentions and bad actions, the masculine and feminine, as Almodóvar conveys that one-directional communication defiles the very concept of healthy intimacy.