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 quite sweet and vulnerability and tenderness when first with Pablo (look how Antonio reacts when he realizes he is about to go all the way with sex with his big director crush), to agony and then mania and this volcanic rage and anger when confronted with this other man, Juan, that Pablo is more attracted to. He has comedic chops as well, like notice his reaction when he is trying to burn the shirt and his mom and Pablo are outside. But he makes Antonio's psychosis so captivating because he takes it from like 2 to 15 in a manner of several seconds.

He, and of course Carmen Maura as Pablo's transgender sister, are reason enough to see the movie, especially as she brings some not so much conflict but push-and-pull with her director brother. Forget the why or how of her playing Transgender (I can hear one or two of you asking if it dates the movie and I respond, so what, she rules here), Almodovar just lives for giving her increasingly heightened beats to play and to react to, though she also shows some compassion once Pablo has his amnesia episode. If Banderas is in more of the Jilted-Fling-Turned-Violent-Stalker thread, she is there to amp up the Melodrama any way she can.

If there is a spot not so much weak but not quite up to the level as Banderas and Maura it is Poncela; he has no choice but to be the more "normal" in quotes of the characters here, even as his Pablo has his fun writing those letters and Almodovar has equal fun shooting the punching of the typewriter keys like it is a form of pornography (kinky!) He is not bad at all, he is pretty good actually, but once he gets to the part of the film with the amnesia he doesn't have much to play and it kind of slows the film down (this despite being a well-worn trope of melodrmas across the world to this day, just ask the Muppets, but I digress).

Law of Desire has great doses of humor, and yet the flashes of seriousness and tragedy punctuate all of the comedy so that it all works and flows together, like when you have one of those pints of ice cream with four different things that all goes together once you get it in your mouth. It has flashes of violence, but it is not about the thrills, Almodovar uses the conventions of the stalker thriller (even with some "ok here you go" cop characters thrown in for good measure), but he really is crafting a character study of a man finding himself in over his head with his own flings and how, like someone typing away at the keys with total abandon, the plot turns into chaos.