Film

Kika

Name: Kika
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1993
Cast: Verónica Forqué, Victoria Abril, Peter Coyote, Rossy de Palma, Àlex Casanovas

Romance
Strange

Almodóvar's audacious comedy-drama about a make-up artist who accidentally resurrects her lover's dead brother, then finds herself caught between him and his father's dark desire. It's transgressive, visually dazzling, and unafraid to let chaos and eroticism collide. For viewers who want cinema that shocks and seduces in equal measure.

TMDb rating

3.2

If you liked this

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown1988

Almodóvar's most accessible masterpiece: a colour-saturated farce about betrayal, desire, and the absolute mess of modern love. The energy, wit, and visual invention will feel instantly familiar.

But The plot juggling can feel frantic, and the emotional stakes sometimes dissolve into pure spectacle—which is precisely the point, but not everyone's point.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown poster

The Skin I Live In2011

Another Spanish film about obsession and bodily transformation, with psychological horror lurking beneath romantic surfaces. It's controlled where Kika is chaotic, but shares the fascination with desire as a destabilizing force.

But It's considerably darker and more genuinely unsettling. The twist lands harder because the film earns dread instead of playing for laughs.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!1990

Almodóvar again, this time making something that's part thriller, part romance, all provocation. It shares Kika's willingness to make the audience uncomfortable about what we're rooting for.

But It's even more in love with its own transgression, and that self-awareness can feel smug. The gender dynamics haven't aged well for some viewers.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Three Kings1999

Both are films that make you laugh at things you feel guilty laughing at, and neither apologizes for the discomfort that creates.

A 1991 Gulf War film that shifts tone radically—starts as war comedy, becomes humanist drama, ends in moral horror. Like Kika, it refuses to stay in one register and asks uncomfortable questions about complicity and what we're allowed to laugh at.

But The tonal whiplash will feel chaotic to some; the political content is earnest and heavy. It's nowhere near as fun or visually rapturous as Kika, which might disappoint.

Volver2006

Almodóvar tightens his chaos into something more emotionally resonant. Penélope Cruz is magnetic, and it proves he could make something that moves you without losing the colour or the mischief.

But It's more conventional than Kika—if you came for maximum weirdness and transgression, you'll find this almost restrained.

All About My Mother1999

Melodrama and farce collide, with transgender identity, grief, and performance woven through. It has Kika's visual exuberance but with deeper emotional weight underneath the artifice.

But The tonal shifts are constant and deliberate—it demands you accept soap-opera heightening and real suffering in the same frame, which exhausts some viewers.

I'm So Excited!2013

Late-period Almodóvar in full colour and costume. A plane full of beautiful disasters, sexual possibility, and darkly comic chaos. Pure cinema pleasure, uninterested in restraint.

But It's slight, even frivolous. The plot barely matters and the characterization is decorative. Some will find it a trivial exercise in style.

High and Low1963

Kurosawa's genre-shifting masterpiece about class, corruption, and the ugliness behind beauty. It shares Kika's interest in how surfaces conceal terrible desires, though in a more sober register.

But It's austere and long, in black and white, and takes its moral questions seriously. Zero camp, maximum gravity.

The Hunger1983

Erotic, visually sumptuous, and genuinely strange. Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in a vampire film that's more interested in atmosphere and desire than plot. Similar fever-dream energy to Kika.

But It's slow, deliberately obscure, and the narrative collapses into pure aestheticism. Many find it more beautiful to look at than to sit through.

Satyricon1969

Fellini's picaresque, nearly plotless journey through decadence and desire. Like Kika, it's episodic, visually baroque, and treats narrative coherence as optional in favour of accumulated sensation.

But It's a 2.5-hour wandering film with only the faintest story. It exists as mood and image rather than drama, which will bore anyone wanting clear motivation or meaning.

The Fountain2006

Both prioritize visual and emotional texture over plot clarity, and both believe that cinema can express desire and death in ways conventional narrative cannot.

Darren Aronofsky's audacious, nearly incomprehensible meditation on love and death across three timelines. Visually dazzling, emotionally delirious, utterly committed to its own strangeness. It shares Kika's refusal to be easy or conventional.

But It's abstract and hermetic—you can't quite follow it, and that's partly the point. Some will find it pretentious self-indulgence; it demands surrender rather than understanding.