Law of Desire

Law of Desire

Original Spanish poster
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Produced by Agustín Almodóvar
Miguel Ángel Pérez Campos
Screenplay by Pedro Almodóvar
Starring Eusebio Poncela
Carmen Maura
Antonio Banderas
Miguel Molina
Music by Bernardo Bonezzi
Cinematography Ángel Luis Fernández
Edited by José Salcedo
Production
company
El Deseo S.A
Lauren Films S.A
Release dates
 February 7, 1987 (Spain)
Running time
 102 Min
Country Spain
Language Spanish
Budget P100,000,000.
Box office P240,365,945 (Spain)

Law of Desire or La ley del deseo (in original Spanish) is a 1987 film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Starring Eusebio Poncela as Pablo, Carmen Maura as Tina and Antonio Banderas as Antonio. It was the first film Almodóvar made independently with his own production company El Deseo.

The story focuses on a complex love triangle between three men. Pablo, a successful gay film director, disappointed in his relationship with his young lover, Juan, concentrates in a new project, a monologue starring his transsexual sister, Tina. Antonio, an uptight young man, falls possessively in love with the director and in his passion would stop at nothing to obtain the object of his desire. The relationship between Pablo and Antonio is at the core of the film, however, the story and own drama of Pablo's sister, Tina, plays a strong aspect to the plot.

Shot in the later part of 1986, Law of Desire was Almodóvar's first work centered in homosexual relationships. He considers Law of Desire the key film in his life and career. It follows the more serious tone set by Almodóvar's previous film, Matador, exploring the unrestrained force of desire. It explores issues of love, loss, gender, family, sexuality and the close link between life and art.

Law of Desire was met with general positive reactions from film critics, and it was a hit with audiences becoming Almodóvar most successful film up to that point. It toured many international film festival, winning the Teddy Award in Berlin and it made Almodóvar known internationally.

Elements from Law of Desire grew into the basis for two later films: Carmen Maura appears in a stage production of Cocteau's The Human Voice, which inspired Almodóvar's next film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; and Tina's confrontation scene with an abusive priest formed a partial genesis for Bad Education.

Plot

Pablo Quintero is a successful gay film and theatrical director whose latest work, The Paradigms of the Mussel, has just been released. At the opening night party, he discusses with his much younger lover, Juan, their summer plans. Pablo would stay in Madrid working on a new project, while Juan would leave for his hometown in the south to work in a bar and stay with his family. Pablo is in love with Juan, but he realizes that his love is not returned with the intensity he desires.

Pablo is very close to his transsexual sister Tina, a struggling actress. Tina has recently been abandoned by her lesbian lover, a model, who left her in charge of her ten-year-old daughter Ada. Frustrated in her relationship with men, Tina dedicates her time to Ada, being a loving surrogate mother. The precocious Ada does not miss her cold mother. She is happier living with Tina and spending time with Pablo, with whom she has a childish crush on. Tina, Ada and Pablo form an unusual family knit. Pablo looks after them both. For his next project, Pablo writes an adaptation of Cocteau's monologue-play The Human Voice, to be performed by his sister.

At the play's opening night, Pablo meets Antonio, a young man who has been obsessed with the director since he watched the gay theme film The Paradigms of the Mussel. At the end of the evening they go home together and have sex. For Antonio this is his first homosexual experience, while Pablo considers it just a lusty episode. Pablo is still in love with his long-time lover Juan. Antonio misunderstands Pablo's intentions and takes their encounter as a relationship. He soon reveals his possessive behavior as a lover.

Antonio comes across a love letter addressed to Pablo, signed by Juan, but which in fact was written by Pablo to himself. The letter makes Antonio falls into a jealous rage, but he has to return to his native Andalusia where he lives with his domineering German mother. As he promised, Pablo sends Antonio a letter signed Laura P, the name of a character inspired but his sister in a script he is writing. In his letter, Pablo tells Antonio that he loves Juan and intends to join him. However, Antonio, who is jealous and wants to get rid of Juan, gets there first. Antonio wants to possess everything that belong to Pablo and tries to have sex with Juan. When Juan rebukes his advances, Antonio throws him off a cliff. After killing his rival, Antonio quickly heads up for his hometown. Pablo becomes a suspect of the crime because the police has found in Juan's fist a piece of clothing that matches a distinctive shirt owned by Pablo. In fact, Antonio was wearing and exact replica when he killed Juan.

Pablo drives down to see his dead lover, he realizes that Antonio is responsible for the murder and confronts him about it. They have an argument and Pablo drives off pursued by the police. Blinded by tears, he crashes his car injuring his head. He awakes in a hospital suffering from amnesia. Antonio's mother shows the police the letters her son received signed Laura P. The mysterious Laura P becomes the prime suspect, but the police cannot find her. Antonio returns to Madrid and, in order to get closer to Pablo who is still in the hospital, seduces Tina who believes his love to be genuine.

To help her brother recovering his memory, Tina tells him about their past. Born as a boy, in her adolescence she began an affair with their father. She runaway with him and had a sex change operation to please him, but he left her for another woman. When her incestuous relationship ended, Tina returned to Madrid, coinciding with the death of their mother, and got reunited with Pablo. Tina has been grateful with Pablo who did not judge her. Tina also tells him that she has found a lover. Pablo gradually begins to recover; he realizes that Tina's new love is Antonio and that she is in danger. He goes with the police to Tina's apartment where she is being held hostage by Antonio. Antonio threatens a bloodbath unless he can have an hour alone with Pablo. Pablo agrees and joins him. They make love and Antonio then commits suicide.

Cast

Production

Though written before Matador, Law of Desire was produced after Matador's international release. Law of Desire was shot in Madrid and Cádiz in the latter part of 1986. It was the first film that came out from El Deseo, the production company that Almodóvar formed in company with his younger brother Agustin and with which he has produced all his subsequent films.[1] It was the experience of working with the producer of Matador that led the path to the Almodóvar brothers to become producers following the model of selling the film before its release.[1] With my first five films I had the impression of having had five children with five different fathers and of always fighting with each one of them, since my films belonged to them, from a financial point of view, but also on an artistic level, that is, on the level of a conception,[1] Almodóvar commented.[1]

The homosexual subject matter in Law of Desire made more difficult to find funding for its production.[2] Initially, the brothers could not get the support from the ministry of culture. It was thanks to the personal intervention of Fernando Mendez Leite, the government representative for film production, that the ministry of culture gave 40 million pesetas to make the film and Lauren films contributed with 20 million and the rest from other sources. [2]The film was a most modest production, with a total budget of 100 million pesetas, less than Almodóvar's previous film.

Commenting on Law of Desire Almodóvar stated that his intention was to make a film about desire and passion: "What interested me most is passion for its own sake. It is a force you cannot control, which is stronger than you and which is as much a source of pain as of pleasure. In any case, it is so strong that it makes you do things which are truly monstrous or absolutely extraordinary".[3]

Reception

Law of Desire, Almodóvar’s sixth film, premiered in Madrid on 7 February 1987. It was the most commercially successful Spanish film at the local box office in 1987, and it was the Spanish film of that year most widely distributed abroad surpassing Mario Camus's The House of Bernarda Alba. Law of Desire toured many festival circuits. It won the award for best director at the Rio de Janeiro film festival; best new director at Los Angeles; the Teddy Award (1987) at the Berlin International Film Festival and Best Film at the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian film festival. In Spain it won Fotogramas de Plata as Best Film and the National award for cinematography for Carmen Maura for her performance as Tina, other awards for the film came from Italy and Belgium.

It took time to Spanish film critics to warm up to Almodóvar’s work. His earlier films were recognized for the irreverence of their humor and social parody but were generally deemed as frivolous. Law of Desire was better received than its predecessor. Ernesto Pardo writing for Segre wrote: I have never been keen on Almodóvar ... I find him too over the top, excessive, unreal... As if he lived in another world... on the other hand [with Law of Desire, Almodóvar] has achieved what at the outset seemed impossible. That is, a more than acceptable film".[4] In Cinco Dias Antonio Gutti criticized the film’s emphasis on the homosexual as too sustained and felt that Almodóvar’s irresistible humor did not appear.[4] Angel Fernandez Santos in El Pais considered that the film contained " such an excess of incidents and events that their sheer number neutralizes some of it's quality". In El Periodico, Jorge de Cominges commented that:" Pedro Almodóvar success, though, in putting together the different elements of such a wild story. In a quite brilliant manner; he creates characters as arresting as the police detective and his son; and he turns the magnificent Carmen Maura into the most sensual woman you can imagine... Law of Desire is a film which is as satisfying as it is amusing and outstanding achievement". Manuel Hidalgo wrote: " Law of Desire is Pedro Almodóvar's most homogeneous, controlled and finished film".[4]

Pauline Kael in The New Yorker commented: "The film has the exaggerated plot of an absurdist Hollywood romance, and even when it loses its beat (after a murder) there’s always something happening. 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".

In her review for The New York Times Janet Maslin said: " What it lacks in depth, Law of Desire makes up in surface energy, with a lively cast, a turbulent plot and a textbook-worthy collection of case histories". Jonathan Rosenbaum from Chicago Reader concluded: "The film bristles with energy and bright interludes before the lugubrious plot takes over…".

In his review for Time Magazine, Richard Corliss called the film " a bleak comic and defiantly romantic". David Edelstein in New York magazine called it " a swirling Cri de Coeur [that] explores the conflict within a director between voyeurism and passionate

Genre

Law of Desire is anchored in the melodrama genre. However Almodóvar explained that the film did not follow the conventions of the genre : “In melodrama there have always been characters that are either good or bad, but today you can’t portray characters so simplistically. There aren’t good people and bad people, everything is more complex. Law of Desire is a melodrama which breaks the rules of the genre".http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/pedro-almodovar-presents-law-of-desire-talks-life-love-art-at-afi-fest-2011#

that Almodóvar 's has spoken of his aspiration for the films of Francis Ford Coppola particularly in the way he mixes generally in his films The The Godfather which mixes gangster film and family drama

The director also mentioned that the was influenced by the Hollywood melodramas of the 1940s and 1950s particularly those made by Douglas Sirk and Billy Wilder’s 1950 Sunset Boulevard , which he called " an epic film with regards to emotion".

There is also the influence of the French writer Jean Cocteau whose play The Human Voice (La Voix humaine) (1932), The voice humane is adapted by Pablo Quintero. The work of Mexican poets in the early 1930s known as Los Contemporaneos, also presented in the work of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Almodóvar refers to a Latin American sentimentality more open melodramatic than in Spain as reflected in Almodóvar preference for choosing Latin American boleros for his films

Analysis

The outrageous titles of Pablo's film seem to belong to John Water' aesthetic universe of pop culture, media, and trash as found in Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), and Desperate Living (1977). Law of Desire is closely link to two Almodóvar’s subsequently films. Religion and sexual abused appear in the character of Ada who with Tina makes a cruz de mayo, a makeshift altar that mixes religious and pagan elements. Ada makes a vote of silence until certain wishes have been fulfilled. She also wants to make her first communion. The scene in which Tina enters her former school where she sang as the soloist at church and confronts Father Constantino, the priest who abused her when she was a boy, formed a partial genesis for La Mala educacion.

The character of Pablo serves as an alter ego for Almodóvar. Pablo is working on his new film whose main character Laura P. The implausibility of its plot reflects the intricate and outrageous plot of Almodóvar's own film. When she was left by one of her lovers, Laura ran after him and broke an ankle. She had her leg amputated, so that others would feel guilty, but even thus, her thirst for vengeance was not quenched."

In the video arcade games scene in which Antonio tries to be seductive, he lights both his and Pablo's cigarette it is a reference to Bette Davis’s film Now Voyager (1942) directed by Irving Rapper in which Paul Henreid puts two cigarette into his mouth and lights one for Bette Davis.

Reinforcing the links between life and art, Ada's mother has left Tina to elope with a photographer. Stage life and real but through law of desire Cocteau monologue talks of the separation of the expressive pore. Almodóvar cited American painter Edward Hopper as an inspiration for the way in which his cinematographer Angle Luis Fernandez photographed Madrid. Tina's revelation of her torrid past to her amnesic brother although narrated but not shown recalls Elizabeth Taylor's outrageous claims in Suddenly, Last Summer, [[Joseph L. Mankiewicz]"s] (1959) adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play.

Dubbing also appears in an early scene of atheist filming in which two old actors are dubbing atheist character in the mussels. Dubbing play a more important fork in Almodóvar subsequent film Wien on the verge of a nervous breakdown were is the profession of the main character Pepa and also of her married lover Ivan. In the story of sibling stated the influence the important precedence of Splendor in the grass Elia Kazan 1961 a melodrama that follow the story of two very different sibling, a brother and a sister play by Wareen Beatty and Barbara Loden. Pair of brother also appear in Aht I have down to deserve this and more importantly in La Mala Educacion. The drama in the hospital brings to mind a similar scene in the Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obssession (1954). Tina appears in Carol's ovations answering the phone tha tells her of major important moments in her life.

Music

The Soundtrack of Law of Desire has been credited to Bernardo Bonezzi. Almodóvar simply reused music from What Have I Done to Deserve? composed by Bonezzi. The theme Gloria, from that film, is heard over the titles. Budget constraints did not allow Almodóvar to commission a full original soundtrack. Instead, he used classical pieces that were either free or cheap to obtain. Dmitri Shostakovich’s tenth symphony is used for the opening credits and Igor Stravinsky’s Tango for Pablo's escape in his car. Almodóvar also used his own composition Voy a ser mama (I am going to be a mother) as incidental music. Organ religious music takes Tina to her past in the scene where she confronts the priest who abused her when she was a boy.

Songs

Two songs are shown prominently in the film underlining the emotional relationship between the characters: Ne me quitte pas, a French torch song, and Lo Dudo, a Latin-American bolero.

Ne me quitte pas was written by the French Belgian singer, actor and filmmaker Jacques Brel. First recorded in 1959, it is one of Brel’s best known songs and has been recorded by many artists. Almodóvar chose a version sung by Maysa Matarazzo, a bosa nova artist who enjoyed considerable success. The song begs the lover not to leave and promises a different world should the lover stay. It is a song of despair full of poetic images. The singer promises to “offer you pearls of rain that come from countries where it doesn't rain, I will create a domain where love will be king, where love will be law, and where you will be queen". In the film the song is associated to Pablo’s love for Juan. It is also later incorporated in the film during the scene in which Tina performs in Jean Cocteau’s monologue play La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) and the song is lipped sync by Ada in the play. The sentimentality of the song reflects Tina’s lost for the love of Ada's mother, and Ada’s own feelings fearing that she is going to be separated from Tina, her surrogate mother.

Central to the film is the song Lo Dudo (I doubt it) a bolero by Los Panchos, a Latinamaerican trio formed in the 1940s. Lo Dudo, written by Los Panchos’s second voice Chucho Navarro, has been immensely popular. It epitomizes Antonio’s love for Pablo and he sings it during their last hour together. Almodóvar described the song as key in the film. A song of spurned love, its lyrics fit the plot referring in the film to Antonio’s love for Pablo and his believe that Pablo would not find a purer love than his.

The Italian romantic song Guarda Che Luna (Look at the moon), written by Fred Buscaglione, frames the scene by the lighthouse in which Antonio confronts Juan. The romantic nature of its words and melody act as a counterpoint to the violence of Juan’s murder.

The film closes with Dejame recordar (Let me remember), a bolero by the Cuban singer and cabaret actor Bola de Nieve. "Who will erase from your life the memory of me, and will allow this love to be forgotten ? This love made out of blood and pain, poor love... "

DVD release

The film was released on DVD in the United States on 3 November 2009, originally as part of the box set pack Viva Pedro. The film is in Spanish with English and French subtitles as the options offered. There are not extra features.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Strauss, Almodóvar on Almodóvar, p. 63
  2. 1 2 Edwards, Almodóvar: Labyrinth of Passion, p. 72
  3. ↑ Edwards, Almodóvar: Labyrinth of Passion, p. 74
  4. 1 2 3 Edwards, Almodóvar: Labyrinth of Passion, p. 73

References

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