ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER - #1012

It’s a cliché to call a film a love letter to cinema. Just as much as say, “the city itself is a character,” or “it’s not for everybody, you either love or hate it.” As a reviewer and critic, I’ve definitely fallen into those traps. You can likely find some pieces on this blog that indulge any of those just by searching key phrases. (See for instance Brazil, a “love letter to the creative spirit” and a “celluloid hero” who is “surrounded by images from Classic Hollywood.”)

But how does one get around that with Pedro Almodovar’s marvelous 1999 drama All About My Mother, a film that ends with a dedication to Bette Davis, Romy Schneider, Gena Rowlands, and all actresses who have dreamed of stardom? It’s a movie that relies equally--and openly--on A Streetcar Named Desire and All About Eve, and even features a young stand-in for the director, a teen who one day dreams of making movies and putting his mother in them. Self-reflexive, and reflective. Pair this with the filmmaker’s most recent triumph Pain & Glory, and we practically have bookends to the career of cinema’s most articulate mama’s boy.

Almodovar’s sole goal here is to create a complex melodrama featuring his favorite actresses, celebrating motherhood less as a nurturing compulsion for the children involved, but more as the life role that fosters the creative spirit, either through encouragement or negation. Pretentiously, we could say that the mother here is not Manuela (played by Almodovar-regular Cecilia Roth), who inarguably provides the social center of All About My Mother, but art itself. Theatre. Motion Pictures. Hollywood. Art.

And yet this is not a pretentious film. Not at all. It’s too sincere, too joyful. Almodovar harbors no concern for the audience’s reaction. He is not worried about conventional plot, even as he sews clear threads through each story and gives plenty of closure. All About My Mother is as messy as life, and as organized as our ability to muddle through it. (Another critical cliché?)

For those curious about the plot: Roth’s Manuela loses her son to a car accident during a birthday outing to the theatre, when chasing after his favorite actress puts the young man in the path of an oncoming car. In her grief, Manuela decides to leave for Barcelona, find the father that the boy never knew, and make amends. Only, when she gets there, the father’s roommate informs Manuela that they have recently disappeared, robbing the apartment in the process. The father, Lola, and their roommate, Agrado (Anotnia San Juan), are both transsexual prostitutes. Lola was also a drug addict. This is why Manuela left without telling anyone she was pregnant. Two decades have passed, but not much has changed.

Once in Barcelona, Manuela’s life becomes intertwined with both a naïve nun (Penelope Cruz) and the actress whose autograph her son was pursuing (Marisa Paredes). With the actress, she seeks some closure; with the nun, she finds some correction. Sister Rosa, as it turns out, is pregnant, and Lola is once again the father. Rosa’s own mother (Rosa Maria Sarda) appears to be a no-go in terms of helping the young woman, so Manuela must step in. This could be her second chance.

For as complicated as all that is, it’s pretty easy to follow. All About My Mother is all about connections and repetition and history doubling up on itself. The actress’ lover, for instance, is also a heroin addict. And Rosa’s elderly father has reverted to a child-like state that requires constant care, usurping the motherly role his wife would otherwise visit on Rosa. It’s pretty intense when all laid out on paper, but Almodovar keeps it light and colorful. His extremely likable characters, played with incredible charisma by his ensemble of actresses, never give in to their burdens, nor do they indulge in depression, and so they are never a burden to watch. How they interact creates the drama, but also generates an undeniable electricity. All About My Mother is a movie about a community that turns into family. Perhaps we should revise: there is no one central mother, but these characters in some way are all surrogate mothers to each other.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN - CRITERION CHANNEL

This post originally written in 2011 for DVDTalk.com.

I'm not one that normally buys into the whole spoiler thing. It gets a little ridiculous. Some people assume any detail about a movie is absolutely crucial and act like you've spit in their popcorn if you get specific at all. Here's a spoiler for you: the internet could stand to chill.

That said, occasionally there is a movie so off-beat, so unpredictable, so mesmerizing, that I really want to reveal as little as possible, it's so much better if you go and find out on your own. The latest from Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In, is just such a film. It's very good, very creepy, and even if you've seen the trailer, most of the mysteries that this disturbing gem holds remain to be discovered.

The basics that I can tell you: Antonio Banderas has once again teamed up with the Spanish director who made him a star. Here he plays Robert Ledgard, a brilliant plastic surgeon who has been working in secret on a synthesized skin that is resistant to fire and insect bites. He lost his wife to burns resulting from a car crash, and he has been so intent on keeping others from suffering the same agony, he has been conducting taboo experiments in the private clinic he built into his mansion. He performs the skin experiments on one patient, a troubled young woman named Vera (Elena Anaya, Mesrine [review]) whom he keeps locked in the bedroom next to his and obsessively observes her via a giant-sized flatscreen, almost like he's looking through the wall itself.

Vera never leaves her room, and she never interacts directly with anyone but Robert. His staff sends her food and other things through a dumbwaiter. Most of Robert's affairs are run by the maternal Marilia (Marisa Paredes, The Devil's Backbone). She has been with Robert since he was a child, and knows him even better than her own son (Roberto Alamo), who grew up to be a criminal. No one else knows that Vera is there or has any inkling as to why. What Robert is doing will certainly have a questionable outcome, but he is blinded to the consequences by his tragic past. As more details of what happened prior become clear, what will happen next becomes even hazier.

The Skin I Live In is, essentially, a horror movie. It doesn't have ghosts or things going bump in the night, nor is it really a slasher flick. Almodóvar dabbles more in an unsettling, psychological brand of horror. I was reminded of both Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face and David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers while watching The Skin I Live In. All three of those movies made me uncomfortable in delightfully nasty ways. They all share a tradition of doctors with ice water in their veins who step away from conventional procedure in search of something more personal. The breach of ethics leads them down dangerous roads, and what they find is seriously gruesome. Banderas is splendid as the slimy scientist. His madness is in how clear his vision is. His private plan is exacting and thorough. The only thing he didn't count on is what the results stir up in himself.

Also very good is Anaya--though, again, it's hard to tell you exactly why without jumping too deep into the plot. Suffice to say, she handles the trickier aspects of Almodóvar's script (which is adapted from a novel by Thierry Jonquet). It's a credit to both the actress and her director that after we come to understand certain things about Vera, we never look at her quite the same. It's hard to say if she's really changed, but so much of storytelling is an invisible art. Perhaps Elena Anaya does do something different, perhaps she has just been different all along and our eyes are only just being opened to it.

It's an unimportant question, really. All that matters is how immersed you are in the going's on that wherever the trick lies, the illusion is imperceptible. Almodóvar's execution of the material is exacting, so meticulously designed, he could get away with almost anything. Robert's house is an incredible set, with every detail from the paintings on the walls to the seemingly limitless number of doors through which anyone could go, be they on the hunt or looking to escape, chosen in order to have as much of a visual effect on the audience as anything that happens in the narrative. It's not just about the particulars of what occurs, it's how it occurs and where. It's the pervasive mood of the piece.

The result is that The Skin I Live In does settle over the viewer like a second skin--albeit one you will quickly want to shed. It's going to be harder than you think, though. The movie will most likely follow you around for the rest of the day, if not longer. Which is exactly what you should expect from a good horror movie. If you aren't appropriately horrified, what's the point?

VOLVER - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written in 2006 upon the theatrical release of Volver and published on DVDTalk.com. (I would likely rethink those first couple paragraphs were I to write it now, but for posterity...)

Pedro Almodovar's new film Volver is a real women's picture. By that I don't mean the sudsy genre films of the '40s and '50s about the secret anxieties of housewives or the loves and losses of career girls, but a movie that is exclusively about women. I can only think of three speaking roles for men in the entire movie, and given that one of these men ends up dead barely a half an hour in, Volver was not the best script to have your agent send you if have a Y chromosome.

I need to tread delicately here before I give you the wrong idea. Volver is not an anti-male movie. It's not like Waiting to Exhale or some other such film where gals sit around dishing dirt on the men who did them wrong, nor is it even a feel-good sisters film like Steel Magnolias (though the connection of sisters is explored). Rather, it's a film about a community of women where the men are absent, and in their place, the ladies have learned to get on without them. Fathers, husbands, boyfriends--they are either deceased or they have left to pursue some other agenda. There may be more men around than we see, a lot of the women don't tell their stories or explain who they've left at home, it's not really important. Almodovar has simply set his story within a segment of the population where the women rely on each other, where they trade back and forth and share.

One thing they share is secrets. Just about everyone in the movie has something they want to hide, a secret shame that is better kept to oneself lest it hurt someone else. The main one is the aforementioned dead body, the husband of Raimunda (Penelope Cruz, Sahara), who crossed a line with Raimunda's teenage daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo, The 7th Day), forcing the young girl to defend herself. Raimunda immediately springs to action to cover up the crime, stressing that if anyone finds out what happened, then Paula should say that her mother did it. The trade-off for this secret is another secret: Paco wasn't really Paula's biological father. Who really was is a far more important revelation than Raimunda is willing to let on.

On the same night, Raimunda's beloved Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave), for whom her daughter is named, also passes. Having to deal with her own crisis at home, Raimunda must send her sister to the funeral alone. Sole (Lola Dueñas, The Sea Inside) is reluctant to go because she is terribly afraid of the dead. This isn't helped by the fright she receives immediately upon arriving: she sees an apparition of her dead mother, Irene (Carmen Maura, 800 Bullets). The ghost follows her home to live with Sole, but is she actually a ghost, or is there something about the death of Raimunda and Sole's parents that the girls don't know?

It should be no surprise to any of the characters in Volver when the dead walk among them. Death is in every aspect of their lives. Everywhere they turn, there is some reminder that this existence won't last. In the village where the family comes from, the people are so aware of their own imminent demise, they buy their funeral plots while still alive and spend their lives caring for their future resting place. In fact, there is actually an urban legend amongst the villagers that Irene came back from the beyond to care for her ailing sibling. That's how important the bond of two sisters is, the mortal coil is easier to break.

Though Almodovar plays a lot of this for laughs, he never gets goofy about it. There are no spooky figures decked out in white sheets that cause things to go bump in the night. A person's connection to those who have passed is important. What has gone before informs what is happening now. No one is more aware of this than Paula's neighbor, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), a terminally ill woman who sees everything and yet remains calm in the face of it all. Her own mother disappeared on the day Raimunda and Sole's parents died, and she's pretty sure the two events were somehow connected. There is another secret at the center of that--plenty of secrets, to be more precise. Agustina is convinced that the departed hold the key to these unknown events, and if Irene is appearing to her family, it's because something has been left unresolved. Until it all comes to light, neither the dead nor the living can move forward.

For as complicated as it all may sound, Volver is tightly plotted. A real character piece, there are no extraneous scenes. Every chosen moment moves the story forward and exposes more about the players. The love of mother and daughter, of sister and sister, and of friends is the sealant that keeps the cracks from showing, allowing Raimunda to take on her daughter's crime and Irene to make her sacrifices. As more of these hidden things are uncovered, the women see that the troubles they all face are universal. One woman is connected to another. While you might be able to guess some of Almodovar's mysteries, it won't matter. The director teases them out with a sly hand, revealing everything at just the right time.

Penelope Cruz is remarkable in this film. The story goes that she was growing fed-up with thankless roles in mediocre Hollywood studio pictures, and she went back to Spain and to Almodovar and asked him to giver her something juicy. He wrote Volver for her, and she returned the favor by inhabiting his heroine with a forceful presence. As a mother forced into a position where she must protect her child, she is funny, sexy, and fierce, while also managing to stay vulnerable. Some of what she has to go through is emotionally scary, but Cruz firmly maintains Raimunda's strength. Her character earns the good things that happen to her, and Almodovar's ending is like a great gift to the audience, fading out on just the right note.

I'm not sure I've adequately summed up Volver. It's many things. It's both comedy and drama, and while not a mystery per se, there is some sleuthing that must be done to sort out the family history. And while, yes, it is a story about women, it is also the blossoming of one woman, of Raimunda, who finds that when put to the test, she has more to give than she realized. The title translates into English as To Return, and it has a greater meaning than just describing the return of the dead mother, it's also about a return to one's self, to a time before the secrets became secrets and changed everything. By letting the truth out, Raimunda can change it all back and become the person she always intended to be.

SOLO CON TU PAREJA - #353

I’ve been circling various artful ways in which to enter this review, but they all make me more irritated and bored than I already am, so I’ll just give it to you straight: Sólo con tu pareja is not a very good movie.

I’ll even go so far as to say that it is one of the more baffling selections in the Criterion Collection. It’s fairly common for Criterion nerds to debate what movies do and do no deserve to be in the Collection, and I tend to be more forgiving than most, preferring to default to the label’s original mission statement and figure out what the film represents that makes it important to this version of cinematic history. When it comes to Sólo con tu pareja, however, I come up with nothing, except that it’s the full-length debut of Alfonso Cuarón, made in Mexico a decade before Y tu mamá también [review]. Well, I guess it’s true, everyone has to start somewhere. The cover copy calls Sólo con tu pareja a “ribald and lightning-quick social satire,” to which I can only reply, “I guess...?”

Sólo con tu pareja, which translates as “Only With Your Partner,” and has also been referred to as “Love in the Time of Hysteria,” is a sex comedy released in 1991. Written by Carlos Cuarón, it tells the story of Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho, BadEducation), a ladies man who we are lead to believe has game inside the bedroom, but who otherwise appears to be a buffoon outside of it. As a schemer, Tomás seems to have picked up most of his moves from Three’sCompany reruns. We’re talking a guy who calls in sick to work while holding the thermometer against a light bulb to prove he has a fever. Over the phone.

Tomás not only refuses to settle down, but he’s irresponsible about it. You see, Tomás is one of those immature lovers who refuses to wear condoms. If the girl is on the pill, that’s enough, he doesn’t think about other consequences (but more on that later). Things change for Tomás on a night he tries to balance two women--his best friend’s assistant, Silvia (Dobrina Liubomirova), and his own boss (Isabel Benet)--keeping one in his apartment and one two apartments down. It’s when moving between the two via the building’s outer ledge, going in and out through the bathroom windows, that Tomás spots the new neighbor that has moved into the middle apartment. Clarisa (Claudia Ramírez) is a pretty flight attendant who captures Tomás’ imagination. So much so, he declares he’s in love and will change his ways to impress her.

Only, as such things go, Tomás has to actually learn his lesson first. Tomás’ best friend, Mateo (Luis De Icaza), also happens to be his doctor, and this puts Silvia in the position to intercept Tomás’ lab reports and mark him down as having tested positive for HIV. Fearing his life now ruined, while everyone else is out celebrating for New Year’s, Tomás is concocting ways to kill himself (like sticking his head in the microwave!). As luck would have it, when Clarisa comes home early and catches her own boyfriend, a pilot with silver-fox Elvis hair, having sex with another woman on her bed, she joins Tomás’ suicide mission. You think they’ll find love with one another rather than go through with it? Well, do ya’?

Oh, and did I mention that earlier Tomás accidentally gave Silvia his stool samples when seeing her off to work, and he took her lunch to the hospital for lab analysis. Is that a “meet cute” or a “meet poop”?

In many ways, Sólo con tu pareja is very much of its time, particularly in style and presentation. One could see it fitting in with the early 1990s Sundance circuit, where many middling efforts were applauded for their quirky energy and stepping outside the mainstream. Indeed, Sólo con tu pareja sort of comes off like Pedro Almodovar decided to make an Adam Sandler movie, but ended up meeting Sandler more than halfway in his attempt to adapt to the comedian’s style. Even for 1991, the comedy is politically tone deaf, making light of people’s ignorance about a very serious subject, with occasional pit stops for racist comments about some Japanese doctors visiting Mateo. Really, that Sólo con tu pareja holds any kind of critical regard at all is down to that strange reverence some cinephiles have for movies in any language other than English. Were this a Hollywood release, it would already be forgotten, and it should be held up as evidence that cinema from other shores is not automatically better or devoid of schlock. We are just normally spared anyone importing the worst of it. Hell, I’d probably sit through The Cobbler again before reaching for this disc.

As a young filmmaker, Alfonso Cuarón already shows an attention to detail and an early interest in tricky shots and extreme angles. Likewise, his relationship with his regular cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, is  starting to form. The storytelling here is clear, as are the pair’s command over a locale. What Cuarón shows little facility for, however, is comedy, which might explain why his career has gone in other directions since this debut. His instincts for what is funny and for how to frame a gag prove woefully inadequate. Despite the preponderance of pratfalls and slapstick, Cuarón is no Charlie Chaplin, and his leading man is no Buster Keaton. Cacho gives an off-putting performance full of mugging and banal mimicry. Worst of all, he fucks like he’s being bitten by bugs and is trying desperately to shake them off his body, meaning this sex comedy isn’t just unfunny, it’s unsexy, making it hard not to root for Tomás to get everything he deserves.

Though vastly different in tone and quality, Criterion also includes two short films from the Cuarón brothers on Sólo con tu pareja: Alfonso’s 1983 student film Quartet for the End of Time and Carlos’ 2002 comedic short Wedding Night. Of the two, Carlos is the winner, with a quick vignette that features a solid gag. The trick here is not overselling it or overstaying his welcome: set-up and punchline.

Quartet is more ponderous, as perhaps befitting a college project. Angst, boy, angst!

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Blu-ray) - #740

Casting back in my memory, I think I first heard of Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the same time I first heard of Douglas Sirk, back in the late 1990s or so when Martin Scorsese and others were trying to introduce Sirk back into the conversation. So, even though it would take me longer to actually experience the cinema of Fassbinder (I was drawn in by the stories I heard of Berlin Alexanderplatz [review]) than it would Sirk, whom I sought out immediately, the two would remain inextricably linked. Largely because Fassbinder wanted it to be so.

The German director’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is his tribute to Sirk, an attempt to adopt some of the same themes as the master of melodrama, to tell a story of women and their concerns, and to do so with the same colorful backdrops. While I’d suggest that the final result might be more aptly described as “Norma Desmond by way of Ingmar Bergman,” one can still see the sudsy fingerprints of Sirk all over it. Yet, it’s also more than homage: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is very much its own thing.

Fassbinder’s film is an adaptation of his own play, and the theatricality of the staging and structure of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant would betray that even if the credits did not. (And, again, like the Sirk influence, this is a good thing). The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is essentially a story in four acts, plus an epilogue, set in the same space, Petra’s apartment. Petra (Margit Carstensen, later seen in Fassbinder’s World on a Wire) is a middle-aged fashion designer who has sealed herself off in a claustrophobic world of her own creation. She still works, but mostly from bed, and as we watch, honestly, we only see her longsuffering, silent servant, Marlene (Fassbinder-regular Irm Hermann), actually put brush to paper and design anything.

Within her decadently decorated four walls, Petra receives many guests, including her cousin Sidonie and eventually Sidonie’s friend, Karin. (They are played, respectively, by Katrin Schaake and Hanna Schygulla, also regulars in Fassbinder films; in the way he builds a stock company of female actors, one might also draw comparisons with Pedro Almodovar.) It’s Karin who throws a spanner in the works. Petra is drawn to her, so in Act Two, she lures the younger woman back to her apartment, and in a case of “who’s playing who?” convinces her to stay with her after hearing Karin’s sob story about how tough her current living situation is.

Petra’s interest in Karin is more than charitable, and by Act Three, the fact that they are lovers is quite obvious, even if it’s not explicitly said so out loud. Yet, it’s also already over, the parasitic union having run its course for Karin, who has gotten what she wants. Leading to the final act, wherein Petra is despondent and suicidal on her birthday. Enter her college-aged daughter (Eva Mattes), whom she verbally abuses, and her aristocratic mother (Gisela Fackeldey), who clearly still rules the roost despite Petra’s many successes, and we see the pattern of three generations of broken women and their dysfunctional understandings of love. Petra lays everything bare, possibly making it clear for the first time for some of the more sheltered viewers in the early-’70s audience, and the melodrama reaches a crescendo.

Fassbinder divides all of these scenarios clearly, inserting a fade to black between and also marking the various sections with different songs, including hits by the Platters and the Walker Bros. Between those fades, he prefers long takes with invisible edits. There are cuts, there are angle changes, but they are never obvious. Once the drama has sucked you in, you’d be hard-pressed to notice or recall editor Thea Eymesz’s nips and tucks. Likewise, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who later went on to work with Scorsese and Coppola (not to mention Prince), uses the camera merely as a framing device. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t highlight--rather, his work is in capturing the drama, as well as color and the costuming. Petra as written and as Margit Carstensen plays her, is forceful enough a presence on her own to command the montage without any added help. Well, except for maybe costume designer Maja Lemcke. The woman’s moods are telegraphed by her outfits and wigs. When she is seducing Karin, she is like an exotic queen out of some mythological history, all baubles and distractions; when she is being jilted, she is more covered, and her hair is a hard-lined bob; on either end of the movie, when she is in despair, she wears a plain nightgown and no wig at all. The space between is so long, we forget her most honest face before we are reminded of it again at the end. Without the warpaint and the wardrobe, she is vulnerable. At her most naked, she is the most alone.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! - #722

Yet another film in the long list of titles I learned about through Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on “At the Movies,” though one I had not seen up until now. I would have been a senior in high school or a freshman in college when Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! would have been released, and it would have likely been a little too perverse for me, farther off the beaten track than I was ready to go. I was still only dabbling in foreign films, had not seen a Pedro Almodovar picture, and was a bit skeeved out by the clip they showed of the toy scuba diver swimming between a woman’s legs. That’s, of course, the most infamous scene in Tie Me Up!, the one that tested the MPAA system and helped lead the way to the NC-17 classification.

Now that I’ve seen the film, that’s one of the least disturbing elements. At least in that little bit, Marina (Victoria Abril) is enjoying herself and having fun under her own volition. In fact, it’s the last moment of freedom, really, before a man of another kind will invade her life.

Marina is an actress who has just completed filming a movie. It’s a good time for her. Prior to this, she struggled with heroin addiction and starred in adult films. It’s these past issues that will give her friends and family cause to worry when she disappears, but also indicates the darker aspects of her personality. It was likely on one of her drug-fueled benders when she first met Ricki (Antonio Banderas) a year prior, himself on one of his many escapes from a mental institution. The 23-year-old is out again, but this time legally, having been cleared for regular life. His first order of business is to find Marina, follow her home, and trap her there, kidnapping her and holding her hostage long enough for her to see what kind of a guy he really is and fall in love with him.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a strange movie. Its subject matter is dark and serious, but its execution is practically frivolous. I suppose the best indication of what kind of genre Almodovar is attempting is signaled by the on-set scenes for when Marina is making her own film within the film. Almodovar is having a metafictional lark here, poking fun at himself and his reputation as a director who favors women, but he’s also calling attention to the odd, uncategorizable nature of Tie Me Up!. The film Marina is starring in is “a spin-off of the horror genre,” and so it is with Tie Me Up!. It is a sexualized Misery, with maybe Ricki channeling a little bit of Humphrey Bogart from The Desperate Hours. The fact that Marina escapes her would-be lover (and also killer) in the fake film by strangling him with a phone cord is a bit of misdirection. It’s Marina who will be tied up with a cord, and eventually she won’t be looking for revenge. Ricki’s plan works. Stockholm syndrome sets in, and Marina ends up loving her captor.

It’s hard to imagine Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! being made today. Or at least being released via any mainstream channels. There’s plenty of gross stuff ending up going straight to disc, but most studios would balk at a film that opens with its hero being released from a mental hospital, stalking a woman, and then becoming her lover with no consequence. Almodovar approaches the scenario with a macabre glee, teasing us with the trappings of a Hitchcockian psychological thriller but then going deep to really get down into the muck of it all. His trademark Technicolor fetish lends Tie Me Up! a bizarre surreality, almost as if Marina and Ricki are in an otherworldly wonderland where his sick fantasies lose their dangerous edge. In a similar fashion, the music by Ennio Morricone toggles between sinister Bernard Hermann-esque themes and more grandiose Hollywood swells. Are we watching a beautiful romance or Norman Bates being let lose to pursue his vision of Madeleine Elster?

The young Banderas is pretty incredible here, cat-like in his predatory movements, but then strangely sweet. He hints at the broken little boy that still lurks somewhere underneath all this grown-up desire. He also has a smoldering sexuality, the quality that had Madonna chasing after him in Truth Or Dare, which would have been shot around the same time. He’s handsome and charming but also just downright weird. In a way, his brokenness fills in the fissures of Marina’s own fractured personality. She exudes sexuality right from her first scene, when she decides to forgo wearing underwear because the lines will show; as a performer, Abril is absolutely comfortable in her own skin, and so she manages to show Marina as someone completely attuned to her own pleasure. As her anger dissipates--aided a little by her lapse back into drugs, it should probably be noted--we can see how she would come to crave the intensity of Ricki’s affection. Almodovar keeps her wrestling with her feelings right up until the end. She can’t make up her mind whether to go along with Ricki or to break out.

And as a viewer, you won’t always be clear on her intentions, either. Even up to the last shot, where for a second it appears Almodovar might borrow from The Graduate [review] and end on an ambiguous expression, I was ready to believe she had realized she had made the wrong decision. The momentary jitters help salvage a final sequence that is maybe a little convenient a turn of events, the director unable to resist giving in to his more melodramatic urges and tacking on a quick resolution.

Yet, it may also just be the act of a prankster. There are a lot of playful gags littered throughout the movie. Banderas outside the sweet shop window with the “O” in the sign over his face and looking like a diver’s mask, the S&M-like garb of the villain in the horror movie, Marina captured between Ricki’s spread legs when he’s standing on his head just before he turns her whole existence upside down--Almodovar’s subversion of conventional sexual imagery is key to subverting our own expectations of what makes a healthy relationship. Holding hands is replaced by handcuffed wrists, and a kidnapper might fix your plumbing (and not just metaphorically). If we were entirely comfortable with it, the trickster would be deprived of his fun. It suggests Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! maybe owes as much to John Waters as to Alfred Hitchcock. We should never stop laughing any more than we should stop guessing.

This is Criterion's first foray into Almodovar's filmography, and hopefully it won't be the last. With a crisp, colorful high-definition transfer and a well chosen selection of extras, including new interviews with the cast and crew, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is an excellent presentation, bringing the singular Spanish director into the fold of a singular company.

This disc was provided by Criterion for purpose of review.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 7/13

The rest of my reviews from July...

IN THEATRES...

* Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, an interesting man overcomes the conflicting message of the commentary his profilers give him, proving personality always wins.

* I'm So Excited, a light-hearted trifle from Pedro Almodovar. As Duran Duran once said, "doesn't have to be serious."

* Only God Forgives. Hey, Gosling, hurry up with my damn croissants.

* Pacific Rim is here to save your summer.

* Red 2, the old men need some Viagra, but the ladies have a good time anyway.

* The Wolverine, just the kind of do-over we were hoping for. Go get 'em, bub!

My Oregonian columns...

* July 5: The Chinese drama Beijing Flickers and the documentary A Girl and a Gun, alongside Rossellni's "Solitude Trilogy"

* July 12: Augustine, a historical drama; Survival Prayer, a meditative documentary; and V/H/S/2, a total piece of crap.

* July 19: A documentary on Big Star, a tribute to Les Blank, and the Serbian gay rights comedy The Parade.

* July 26: Hava Nagila: The Movie traces the history of the famous song; Men in Suits looks at the actors who dress as our favorite movie creatures; and the not-so-fantastic Fantastic World of Juan Orol is a biopic of the Mexican Ed Wood.

* August 2: Get In Bed With Ulysses and let James Joyce put you to sleep; or look at dramas based on real life, the human trafficking story Eden and James Cromwell in Still Mine. 

ON BD/DVD...

* The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, Luc Besson's botched adaptation of the beloved Jacques Tardi comic book.

* Foolish Wives, the silent classic from Erich von Stroheim, newly mastered in HD.

* In Another Country, a romantic triptych teaming French actress Isabelle Huppert with South Korean director Hong Sang-soo.

 * Mayerling, the 1957 television production with Audrey Hepburn, long thought to be lost, finds its way into the world at last.

* Niagara, featuring Marilyn Monroe's sole turn as a femme fatale.

* Summer and Smoke, a minor adaptation of Tennessee Williams distinguished by a fantastic performance from Geraldine Page.

* Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola's mess of a vampire movie. 

* Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold's stripped down take on Emily Brontë.