what is love?
by
Douglas Messerli
Pedro
Almodóvar and Yuyi Beringola (writers), Pedro Almodóvar (director) ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) / 1990
The
hero of Pedro Almodóvar’s 1990 film Tie
Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Ricky (Antonio Banderas) might be described—much like
Alan Randolph’s Mikey (Keith Carradine) in his 1984 work, Choose Me—as a crazy Casanova. Both begin the films by being
released from insane asylums, and both focus on beautiful but mentally unstable
women as someone they immediately determine to bed and marry. Both of these
films, moreover, border on edgy comedy and a genre close to a thriller, wherein
the women are both put into danger at the very same moment that they are
liberated.
Aspiring actress Marina Osorio (Victoria Abril) is very much on the “verge of a nervous breakdown” (the title of another of Almodóvar films), trying hard to shed her previous life of porno acting and drug addiction by landing a role in a kind of third rate horror film being directed by has-been filmmaker Máximo Espejo (Francisco Rabal). Although now wheelchair-bound, Espejo has the hots for Marina, who was evidently introduced to him by her sister, Lola (Loles León). Planning for a celebration after the last shoot of the film, the two sisters are asked to perform a sexy dance routine.
And soon after, when he gently handcuffs
her to accompany Marina on a visit to her doctor (Maria Barranco)—she has a
toothache which has been exacerbated by Ricky’s slug—we perceive a sort of
loving vulnerability to this predator that turns his violent actions against
the woman to something else. Even the doctor approves of what appears to be
Marina’s new “boyfriend,” particularly when he suggests that the doctor should
not encourage Marina to take more drugs.
In the next few scenes, moreover, he
carefully purchases a nicer brand of cord and masking tape that doesn’t hurt
upon its removal. He is even willing to hook up with a street vendor in search
of the drug prescribed by the doctor for Marina, putting his own life in danger
and which later results in his being beaten up.
Like a gallant he offers his would-be
lover an apartment across the hall which has been temporarily vacated by a film-making
friend. And when the couple finally does have sex, he is apparently a wonderful
life. That scene, in fact, originally received an X-rating in the US,
occasioning a suit which ended that rating in the American film industry.
No, I would argue, Marina falls in love
with Ricky not because she is a victim, but because her predator, himself, is
the deluded victim of cupid’s arrow. Ricky is the truly helpless one, willing
to battle for her love even if he must fight that out on her very skin. I
imagine many wife-beaters justify their acts in that manner; but in Almodóvar’s
world, love is always a strange and violent thing, filled with breakdowns,
drugs, transformations, revenge, and, yes, even a kind of joyful madness. Certainly,
it is never pure or simple.
Los Angeles,
January 15, 2017
Nobody sees the film the way I do. The key for me is in the final scene where Ricky, Lola and Marina are driving off to their new lives. Ricky, in the back seat, and Lola in the front passenger seat look happy. Significantly(?), Resistiré by El dúo Dinámico is on the radio. The song is about standing up for yourself no matter what bad things might happen to you. In what I think is a marvelous piece of acting by Abril, Marina clearly has decidedly mixed feelings about what's happening. Instant subtext.
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