So funny to Watch Law of Desire the night after watching Body Double. Funny, because after seeing Melanie Griffiths in a sexy, cool and interesting role - finally making it clear to me why there was any interest in her as an actress - we get to see the young Antonio Banderas in Law of Desire. Another sexy, edgy, very physical performance. A stark reminder of what time does to a person. Something to resist rather than embrace perhaps.
Plot synopsis [by me for a change]: Pablo Quintero (Eusebio Poncela) is a homo film director who meets the beautiful Antonio (Antonio Banderas) at the same bar he recently celebrated his most recent film premiere in. This is the same film premiere that sets off Antonio's obsession with Pablo (as is made clear by Antonio rushing into a bathroom cubicle at the end of the movie to re-enact the 'fuck me' masturbation scene). Antonio accompanies Pablo home where they have sex and the obsessive behaviour becomes more aparent.
Woven into this narrative is Pablo's transgender sister, Tina (Carmen Maura) and her daughter/niece Ada (whose mother is played by actual transsexual Bibí Andersen). In the film's final chapters we discover Tina engaged in a sexual relationship with her father as a young boy and that the two of them fled to Morrocco once they were discovered by Tina and Antonio's mother. Once in Morocco Dad arranges for Tina to have a sex-change before abandoning her for another woman. ha.
Increasingly determined to possess Pablo, Antonio tries to prevent any chance of a reunion between Pable and his former lover, and the man he still loves, Juan. After an attempted rape, Antonio throws Juan from a cliff to his death. Discovering that Juan is dead and that Antonio is the one responsible, Pablo drives into a tree and suffers injuries [including amnesia] which keep him hospitalised while two policeman attempt to track down Juan's killer. Finally, Pablo discovers that Tina's mysterious new boyfriend is the deranged Antonio. Taking Tina and a policeman hostage, Antonio wrangles a final hour with Pablo during which Pablo seems to fall in love with him (coz you know how romantic a bit of murder/death/kill is). Antonio kills himself after their action massage and Pablo trips over the religious alter in his apartment to get to him, setting off a large fire in the process. As the apartment goes up in flames around him, Tina and the policemen outside scale the building using some handy scaffolding in a surreal and wonderful final scene.
Best supporting role: The silky, trashy, gaudy, huuuuge Versace shirt that implicated Pablo and finally condemns Antonio.
No comments:
Post a Comment