Law of Desire (1987)

What I loved about La Ley del Deseo is that it's like a soap opera, only that it's made by and about lunatics. Almodóvar likes to blur the line between camp and drama, and I'd say he succeeds completely. His Universe of loveable yet rather depraved characters is full of color, excess and humor, and on the screen it's enrapturing and we can accept it as the "real" world... but I couldn't help thinking that, if in fact these people existed in our day to day reality, we would have to be very careful not to get on their bad side. Pablo is a filmmaker at the top of his game. He's in the process of writing a film for his sister Tina, who lives with a little girl (whose mother has left her while she elopes with her lover). The girl is platonically in love with Pablo, who loves her back like a devoted uncle. Pablo is madly in love with Juan but, because of his high-maintenance, capricious nature, Pablo is never fully satisfied with him. His awareness of his own difficult personality makes him suffer very much. When Juan must return to his work in a town by the sea, Pablo tries for them to "forget" each other. However, he never falls out of love, not even after meeting Antonio, a crazy obsessive fan who will go to any lengths to have him all to himself. This is a complicated storyline, in which -for a while- it's hard to tell what is the main plot and whether the subplots are any less important; Almodóvar uses all these inter-connections to create absurd, far-fetched conflicts to go with the drama (Pablo's romantic frustration and Antonio's jealousy). Relationships between the characters take a while to become clear, but that's one of the most interesting progressions in this film. Tina, played by Carmen Maura like only she can, fearless and vibrant, has many secrets. This more sombre part of her character is implicitly there always, even in spite of her outwardly personality. Pablo is by far my favorite character, especially due to Eusebio Poncela's performance. He is simply great. In a film with so many melodramatic speeches and absurd situations, he makes Pablo real, and creates heart-wrenching moments with his eyes only. Antonio Banderas is yet again cast as an obssessive fan (Matador! Átame!), and he also does a great job. His character undergoes many changes of attitude, forced and otherwise, throughout the film, and he had no trouble keeping up. In La Ley del Deseo, scandal is the norm. Almodóvar made the argument and the characters as scandalous as possible by believable standards. This is what I find so exhilarating about him. He is not afraid to let his imagination fly and reveal his most cynic, dirtiest, or corniest fancies. So often his film could have crossed the line into sheer camp; it doesn't because he knows how to administer his fabrications, and he knows how to pick good actors and write all these charming roles. I laughed as much as I cringed. The first sequence is absurd, confusing, gratuitious, but it sets the mood for the film: every single one of the characters' problems was brought on by sex. Sex is everywhere, in every scene, and in every shot. Add to this murder, cocaine, fluorescent colors, music, and a Catholic altar, and you have an idea of what goes on. Almodóvar paired images and scenes of such intensity as the beautifully sad ending or the car crash scene, with humorous and corny ones like the appearance of the little girl's mother, or the policemen scenes. I don't know if Almodóvar was trying to tell us anything about Spanish society, about promiscuity, about honesty. These things occur to me, but I don't know if they're merely casualties. I do know La Ley del Deseo is 97 minutes of absorbing excess and heightened emotions, and that's all I need to know.