In the 25 years since Law
of Desire Almodóvar has refined his filmmaking and writing styles to the
point of near perfection. Looking at this older film you almost have to ignore
the occasional stilted dialogue and acting and focus instead on his themes,
which were as rich and fulfilling then as they are now.
Almodóvar has always been fond of setting films with
films or plays within films and Law of
Desire is not different, featuring both. He’s also always pushed the
boundaries of acceptability in filmmaking and here he opens with a sexually
explicit scene that, it turns out, is being directed by Pablo Quintero (Eusebio
Poncela) as part of a film that will make him even more of a celebrity. Pablo
has a fairly strong habit of engaging in both drugs and promiscuous sex with
young men he meets while out in his hometown of Madrid. His regular lover Juan
goes away on an extended holiday leaving open the opportunity for Antonio
(Antonio Baderas) to take his place and become jealous to the point of making
some very poor decisions.
As is so often the case in his films, Almodóvar is less
concerned with what happens than he is with how it happens and the people that
cause it to happen. Here is a writer and director obsessed with the fluid
nature of identity. He doesn’t only explore these themes within the story, but
also in the casting. Almodóvar repeatedly used Banderas in his early films to
play the young gay lover. Of course Banderas is heterosexual but had an early
status in Spain as a gay icon. He has since become a female heartthrob. I point
this out only because I think Almodóvar uses Banderas intentionally in this way
to add an extra layer of confused identities. Antonio the character at first
claims he doesn’t sleep with men, but then quickly jumps into bed with Pablo.
Antonio doesn’t think of himself as gay. He is a lover, a sentimentalist. These
are facts he must conceal from his domineering mother, who disapproves even of
the possibility of his having a female lover.
Almodóvar plays with identity in other more striking
ways. Pablo’s strongest confidante is his sister Tina, formerly his brother who
underwent a sex change operation. She has an adopted daughter, Ada (Manuela
Velasco), who receives Pablo’s adoration. To confuse things even more, Ada is
the biological daughter of a woman named Ada, played by the well known transgendered
actress Bibí Andersen. Make no mistake about it – Almodóvar deliberately cast a
non-transgendered actress as Tina and vice versa for Ada. The suggestion,
present in virtually all of his films, is that identity is fluid and not
necessarily tied to our physical parts or the shell we are encased in, a
hypothesis presented in an almost literal form in The Skin I Live In, his most recent film.
The colorful, red-soaked, purple prose films of Almodóvar
are known for being campy and highly stylized. But here, as with some other
early efforts, some scenes come across as a bit ridiculous with the occasional
poor acting to match. If you look at the progression of his work over the last
quarter century, you’ll probably find that as a writer Almodóvar has
continually improved from straight camp to finely honed melodrama and as a
director he has gone from sledgehammer symbolism to a greater ability to
finesse his message. He keeps the film alive with great energy, an admirable
trait he’s maintained throughout his career.
But still I like the movie for its bold expression even
if I think he tries to pack too much in. In addition to the issues of identity
that most of his characters have, he throws in a dig at the Catholic Church
(not at all unusual for Almodóvar) and a back story involving an incestuous father-son
relationship. I can forgive the obviousness of scenes like Tina soaking herself
in the watery stream from a hose on a hot summer night or the soap opera level
drama of Pablo losing his memory at a dramatically contrived moment in the
story (and then getting it back even more conveniently) because I like where he
ultimately takes the story of Antonio, the only true tragic character in the
film – a young man with the emotional output of an adolescent who only wants to
feel proper love. He achieves his catharsis, but at great cost. This also comes
in a sequence that changes the film’s tone from melodrama to thriller, a change
that, while unnecessary, keeps you aware that you are watching some staged.
That has always been one of Almodóvar’s greatest strengths.
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