loving the wrong people
by Douglas Messerli
Pedro Almodóvar (screenwriter and director) Le ley del deseo (Law of Desire) / 1987
It some respects it's hard to say
exactly what Almodóvar's 1987 film Law of
Desire is truly about. True, there is a lot of "desire" spread
around the movie's few figures: handsome, middle age film director Pablo
Quintero (Eusebio Poncela) clearly desires his current young
"boy-toy" lover, Juan Bermúdez, and, apparently, sleeps with him on a
regular basis—despite the fact that the young man is "straight." It
is apparently for that reason that he sends the boy away, hoping to cure
himself from his infatuation with Juan.
Pablo's sister, Tina Quintero—a transsexual played by a woman, Carmen
Mauro—desires a career on the stage and falls in love, at present, with women,
living in quasi-lesbian like relationships. She also dearly loves the daughter,
Ada (Manuela Velasco) of her former lover, also named Ada (performed, in a
typical Almodóvar switch, by the beautiful transsexual Bibi Andersen).
Another young man, Antonio Benítez (Antonio Banderas) seeking a career
in acting, almost explicably becomes obsessed with Pablo, seeking to replace
Juan's role in Pablo's life. Like Juan, he too appears to be "straight,"
but is completely ready and willing to make love to Pablo, getting fucked for
the very first time upon their second encounter. In Almodóvar's fuzzy
screenplay, however, it is hard to know whether he truly sexually desires Pablo
or whether he desires the career Pablo may offer a good lover. In any event, it
does not pay off; Pablo's next project is a stage version of Cocteau's The Human Voice, basically a monologue
for a woman; the director offers his sister the part, with the young Ada
playing a delightful minor role. Pablo's script, Laura P., is never completed.
As in nearly all of Almodóvar's often masterful films, the colors and
decor are beautiful, the characters equally attractive or, as in the case of
Carmen Mauro, fascinating to watch. But in Law
of Desire these figures circle round each other with little apparent logic,
creating sexual or psychological flashes that, at times, seem more voyeuristic
in their effect that dramatically essential.
The central dramatic thread is kept alive by the young Antonio who moves
in and advances on Pablo with all the force and skill of a trained commando
group taking over a terrorist compound; snooping through Pablo's
correspondence, reading his scripts, overhearing conversations, and
ingratiating himself with the filmmaker. Perhaps Almodóvar is telling us
something about his own personal experiences. Certainly, the film seems to have
no possible direction but the route it takes, creating a kind of Fatal Attraction-like subplot, where
Antonio stalks Pablo's former lover Juan, first attempting to rape him or, at
least, to possess him as an accessory to the director (he has also purchased an
exact copy of a shirt Pablo wears), but eventually killing the young boy in the
process.
With that act, it appears, Almodóvar did not have clue where to take the
plot, creating an inexplicable detour where Pablo, having determined to visit
Juan, is chased by the police and, after crashing into a tree, winds up in the
hospital with temporary amnesia. There has always been something
soap-opera-like about Almodóvar's stories, and often that is part of their
charm. But this time, the unexpected twist of the story seems to have been
created only so that Tina, in an attempt to bring back Pablo's memory, reveals
that she has been responsible for their parents' separation, having had an
affair with their father while still a young boy, and transforming her
sexuality after their parents' divorce in order to go on living with him—introducing a
strange Freudian wrinkle that takes incest about as far as it can go. At least
we now understand why Tina has become a lesbian!
Oh, but I forgot to mention, she now has a new boyfriend. Although Pablo
regains his memory, he fails to ask the boyfriend's name until it dawns on him
who Juan's murderer might be. Negotiating with the police and Pablo by holding
Tina and Ada as hostages, Antonio wins an hour alone with his former lover.
Another quick jump into bed closes with Antonio shooting himself, Pablo bent
over the dead body with what appears to be new remorse. Had he really come to
love this intruder?
It really doesn't matter, of course, since the entire film has been
little but a dance of figures all in love with the wrong people.
Fortunately, the very next year Almodóvar swung back with a new finely
tuned farce that was comically brilliant, Women
on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Los Angeles, September 19, 2012
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2012).
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