Pedro Almodovar's LAW OF DESIRE (1987)
Pedro Almodovar does a near-balletic form of a see-saw act in Law of Desire between high-drama and high camp and finds that it works best to skip between both beats in order to keep the audience on its toes. This is a film that has murder, stalking, megalomania, letters signed by "Laura P" even as it is written by a man (the male lead Pablo, played by Poncela), power trips, amnesia, and the occasional bump of cocaine here and there. It shouldn't really work, but it does; this came out the same year as Fatal Attraction, and while it is simple enough to declare that film has more memorable set pieces, I would posit that if Glenn Close saw what Antonio Banderas is doing here she would have to give a nod like to say "yes, good on you, loco-pantalones!" This features in Banderas's performance here, also (curiously, maybe written specifically for him after Matador, also named Antonio) his first break-out/big show-case work as an actor, where he gets to go from qui...
