Law of Desire

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

1987 / 102min / DCP

Everything is cinema to smut movie director Pablo Quintero (Eusebio Poncela) in Almodóvar’s absurdist melodrama, where movie madness meets plain old madness. Our pornographer protagonist carefully plans the mise en scène of his relationship with working-class ex-partner Miguel Molina, starts plotting to make a film from the life of his transgender sister (Carmen Maura), and he even finds inspiration in the jealous rages of psychotic new lover Antonio Banderas—which threaten to turn Quintero’s life into a tawdry tragicomic thriller. “[Almodóvar] manages to joke about the self-dramatizing that can go on at the movies, and at the same time reactivate it.”—Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Part of Close-Up: Films on Film