High Heels () is a 1991 melodrama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar and starring Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and Miguel Bosé. The plot follows the fractured relationship between a self-involved mother, a famous torch singer, and her grown daughter she had abandoned as a child. The daughter, who works as a television newscaster, has married her mother's ex-lover and has befriended a female impersonator. A murder further complicates this web of relationships. The film has the feel of other mother–daughter melodramas like Stella Dallas (1937), Mildred Pierce (1945), Imitation of Life (1959) and particularly Autumn Sonata (1978), which is quoted directly in the film. Despite mixed reviews, the film was a commercial success. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. Plot Rebeca, a television news broadcaster, waits anxiously at a Madrid airport for the return of her mother, Becky del Páramo, a famous torch singer, who is returning to Spain after a fifteen-year stay in Mexico. While she is waiting, Rebeca recalls incidents from her early life when her mother, preoccupied with her career and romantic life, neglected and rejected her. Rebeca has since become a newsreader for a television station owned by her husband Manuel. The intensity of the family reunion is heightened because, many years ago, Manuel was one of Becky's lovers. On the night of her return, Becky, Rebeca and Manuel have supper and then go out to see Letal, a female impersonator whose drag act is based on Becky. For some time, Rebeca has been coming to see the concerts whenever she misses her mother. Backstage, Rebeca helps Letal to remove his costume and, kneeling in front of him, she is impressed by his manhood. Letal takes advantage of the situation and they make love. Manuel, who no longer loves his wife, wants to sleep with Becky again and divorce Rebeca. A month later, Manuel is murdered in his villa. He had spent the evening first with his mistress Isabel (also Rebeca's sign language interpreter on the news) and then with Becky who, having become his lover again, had come to announce it was over between them because she had learnt about his other mistress. It was Rebeca who discovered the body. The investigating magistrate, Judge Domínguez, knows that their relationship has not recovered since Rebeca