The curtain of salmon colored roses and heavy gold fringing which covers the stage is pulled back to reveal a Pina Bausch spectacle, Cafi M|ller. Among the spectators, two men are sitting together by chance. They don't know each other. They are Benigno (a young nurse) and Marco (a writer in his early forties). On the stage, filled with wooden chairs and tables, two women, their eyes closed and their arms extended, are moving to the music of The Fairy Queen, by Henry Purcell.

The piece is so moving that Marco starts to cry. Benigno can see the gleam of his chance companion's tears, in the darkness of the stalls. He'd like to tell him that he too is moved by the spectacle but he doesn't dare. Months later, the two men meet again at "El Bosque", a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma.

It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. When Marco walks by the door of Alicia's room, Benigno doesn't think twice before speaking to him. It's the start of an intense friendship... as lineal as a roller coaster. During this period of suspended time between the walls of the clinic, the lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny.

Directed by
Pedro Almodovar

Cast
Javier Camara - Benigno
Dario Grandinetti - Marco Zuloaga
Leonor Watling - Alicia
Rosario Flores - Lydia
Geraldine Chaplin - Katarina Bilova
Mariola Fuentes - Nurse Rosa
Lola Duenas - Matilde
Beatriz Santiago - Nurse A
Paz Vega - Amparo
Fele Martinez - Alfredo
Adolfo Fernandez - Nino de Valencia
Elena Anaya - Angela

Production Co.
El Deseo SA

Produced by
Agustin Almodovar
Michel Ruben

Studio
Sony Pictures Classics

Writer
Pedro Almodovar

Music
Alberto Iglesias