Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Movie Review
When Sigmund Freud asked “What do women want?,” he, like many men, probably wasn't listening to the answer. We watched most of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! with clenched teeth. Pedro Almodovar's eighth movie deserves its NC-17 rating and I dread its effects on grown-up weirdos who might be inspired by it. Ricky is an escaped mental patient who falls in love with a drug-addicted prostitute named Marina and vows to return as her husband. When Ricky is finally released from the institution, his true love has abandoned her former wild ways and is working hard to improve her life as an actress. Ricky kidnaps Marina, punches her in the face, gags her, ties her up, and keeps her a prisoner until she falls in love with him. Even though Marina swears this will NEVER, NEVER happen, Ricky the psycho obviously knows his willing female better than she knows herself. The gay version of this story, 1987's Law of Desire, made Almodovar a household name in America. Why did that film work while Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! emerges as the uninspired retread that it is? Well, for one thing, Carmen Maura isn't around to distract us from the lameness of the central plot. Also, I suspect that Marina is really supposed to be a gay male who's into bondage, but Almodovar turned the character into a defenseless woman so it would look like he'd dreamed up a brand new plot. Without the wonderful Maura as his hilarious interpreter, Almodovar's humor seemed forced, corny, and misogynistic. Almodovar even throws away a promising subplot involving some amusing shenanigans on a movie set. Victoria Abril is lovely and poignant as Marina, but Antonio Banderas, once again, is completely unbearable as an obsessive lover. Almodovar has complained about the American ratings system, comparing it to France's repressive regime. But restricting access to adult patrons of Tie! Me Up! Tie Me Down! in the U.S. is hardly the same as the internal censorship Almodovar would have faced if he were making films in Franco's Spain. If Almodovar's latest is not the huge international hit that Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was, his shaky sense of proportion and faltering artistic balance is largely to blame this time around. AKA: Atame.
1990 (NC-17) 105m/C SP Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas, Loles Leon, Francesco Rabal, Julieta Serrano, Maria Barranco, Rossy de Palma; D: Pedro Almodovar; W: Pedro Almodovar; C: Jose Luis Alcaine; M: Ennio Morricone. VHS, LV, Letterbox