I’m So Excited, Pedro Almodovar’s 20th feature film, begins with the disclaimer “What you are about to see is a work of fiction and fantasy. It bears no connection to reality.” This seems peculiar because it’s so unnecessary: Almodovar has never been mistaken for a realist, and the opening scene of I’m So Excited is particularly cartoonish. Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas turn in cameos as blue-collar airport workers, an unsubtle bit of stunt casting that’s funny all the same. Cruz is trucking baggage to a plane when a colleague unexpectedly turns up in her path; she swerves to avoid hitting him, and the baggage topples onto him instead. Banderas runs up to help, and within a few lines of dialogue they reveal not only that he and Cruz are a couple but that, for two months, she’s been hiding from him that she’s pregnant. The colleague, meanwhile, tries to get his bearings despite being covered in blood, his demeanor comically unfazed. Amid the slapstick and melodramatic cliches, the technicians forget to check the landing gear of a plane about to fly from Madrid to Mexico City, thus putting the flight in jeopardy.

That quality isn’t evident at first, because Almodovar introduces the film’s morbid aspect at the height of a breathless comic set piece. Bruna (Lola Dueñas), a passenger from first class, demands to enter the cockpit when she has a premonition that something life-changing will happen, and Joserra (Javier Camara), a flight attendant, grudgingly takes her up front. She retells her vision to the pilots, Alex (Antonio de la Torre) and Benito (Hugo Silva), explaining that she’s clairvoyant and her premonitions usually come true. This sets off a slew of revelations: Joserra has been having an affair with Alex, who’s married to a woman and has two children; Benito, who has long questioned his heterosexuality, once gave Alex a blow job; and Bruna, though obsessed with sex, remains a virgin in middle age because her clairvoyance scares away men. As in Almodovar’s early comedies, the characters divulge these secrets casually, even giddily, suggesting the movie takes place in an alternate universe where nobody feels shame. During the conversation the pilots realize that the landing gear is kaput and they need to arrange an emergency landing if they want to land safely at all; until they can find a runway that’s clear, they must fly in circles over Spain. The bad news registers almost as a non sequitur.

Directed by Pedro Almodovar