Coming off a desire-soaked, cresting thriller high in Matador, Pedro set his sights on a convoluted homosexual love triangle in The Law of Desire. Pablo (Eusebio Poncela), a gay film director and writer, finds himself bored of cocaine nightlife and his young lover Juan (Miguel Molina), but finds his passion reignited by a new youngster (Antonio Banderas) while producing a one-woman show for his transsexual sister Tina (Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura). A masterful display of pacing and tone, The...
Coming off a desire-soaked, cresting thriller high in Matador, Pedro set his sights on a convoluted homosexual love triangle in The Law of Desire. Pablo (Eusebio Poncela), a gay film director and writer, finds himself bored of cocaine nightlife and his young lover Juan (Miguel Molina), but finds his passion reignited by a new youngster (Antonio Banderas) while producing a one-woman show for his transsexual sister Tina (Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura). A masterful display of pacing and tone, The Law of Desire cemented Almodóvar’s status as a great filmmaker and helped to propel Antonio Banderas to international fame. Pauline Kael wrote of the film (alongside Raising Arizona) in The New Yorker, “Almodóvar’s tone is not like anyone else’s… this director manages to joke about the self-dramatizing that can go on at the movies, and at the same time reactivate it. The film is festive. It doesn’t disguise its narcissism; it turns it into bright-colored tragicomedy.”
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1987, DCP, 101 min.