Plot
Pilar, a meek housewife living in Toledo, gathers few belongings one night and flees her apartment with her seven year old son, Juan. They find shelter with Pilar's sister, Ana, who would soon marry her Scottish live-in boyfriend. Antonio, Pilar's husband, tries to make her change her mind, but she is tired and fearful of his abusive behavior. Determined to start a new life on her own, Pilar sends her sister to retrieve her belongings from the apartment she shared with her estranged husband. Once there, Ana discovers through medical bills that her sister has also been physically abused by Antonio. When he arrives they have a confrontation.
Antonio still loves his wife but he can not control his temper outburst. Trying to bring Pilar back, he joins an anger management group of married men who would like to change their disruptive behavior towards their wives. The male therapist listens to them, guides them and gives Antonio a notebook in which to express his feelings in order to understand them and control his anger. With his sister's encouragement, Pilar finds a job in the gift shop of a church that is a touristic attraction and in which Ana works restoring some paintings. Her newfound economical independence and the camaraderie of her coworkers awakens in Pilar a dormant interest in art. She begins to study on her own in order to become a tourist guide. Pilar is initially fearful of Antonio, but they are brought together when, in spite of Ana's protestations, Gloria, their mother, invites Antonio to Juan's birthday celebration.
Pilar is still very much in love with Antonio in spite of his abusive behavior towards her. Juan misses his father and Pilar begins to soften her attitude towards Antonio. When they have a chance to talk, Antonio explains to her that he wants to change. He has enrolled in group therapy. He also has to deal with his frustration as a salesman in an appliances store. Pilar quickly warms up to Antonio's courtship and they begin to sneak out for secret meetings and romantic encounters. During Ana's wedding Pilar, with the full support of her mother, brings Antonio along. The two sisters have an argument after Pilar tells Ana that she is coming back to live with her husband. At first Pilar and Antonio are happy to be back together. Encouraged by his wife, Antonio still goes to his anger management therapy. However he has to deal with his frustration with his low paying job as appliance salesman in a store. He feels threatened by Pilar's economical independence since she is still working in the gift shop.
Pilar applies for a job as a tourist guide in a museum in Madrid, but they would have to leave Toledo and Antonio wants to stay put, fearing that it would be difficult for him to find a better job in Madrid. Pilar efforts to convince him that if she gets the job and they move to Madrid it would be beneficial, falls on deaf ears. The day in which she has the job interview, just when a coworker is waiting for her outside to take her there, Antonio explodes in anger. He mistreats her, tears up her clothes and locks her stark naked in the balcony for all the neighbors to see. After this abuse and humiliation, Pilar leaves Antonio for good. She gets the job she wanted and begins to work in the museum.
Read more about this topic: Take My Eyes
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“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
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“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)