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Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! by Richard Natale It's time for all you Cassandras to come out and crow. Just as you predicted, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has started repeating himself. However, if you've never seen an Almodovar film before, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! would be a good place to start, because it contains many of the virtues of his best films (for example, Law of Desire), and the same delicious, tilt-angle view of life that marks him as a world-class talent. And in many respects, Tie Me Up! displays Almodovar at his most confident. It's far more adept than some of the earlier, messier charades, like Dark Habits, and while it's as graceful and polished as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, it's not as self-consciously stylized. If it's not as baldly flirtatious, that is perhaps because he no longer feels the need to shock us simply to get our attention. The antics in Tie Me Up! are less perverse than in previous Almodovar, but then again, it would be hard for him to get any more outre then, say, having his protagonist masturbate to a snuff film (Matador). Tie Me Up! is plain, run-of-the-mill sexual politics: Boy chases girl; boy ties girl up; girl falls in love with boy. Visually, this film is simpler than Women on the Verge, closer in tone to Bunuel than any of Almodovar's previous films--the work of an identifiably Spanish filmmaker. Almodovar doesn't borrow here from other outside influences, such as Douglas Sirk and Frank Tashlin, as he has so often in the past. The performances are also less broadly comic. The pathetic, lascivious, aging director played by Francisco Rabal is a direct homage to the subtler Bunuel (Rabel starred in Nazarin, Belle de Jour, Viridiana). And though the film's leading man, Antonio Banderas, plays a character not all that different from the demented melancholic abductor he portrayed in Law of Desire, there's a conviction and blithe inner logic to his actions that is almost frighteningly real. (A deeply troubled romantic, he longs for the illusory goal of marital stability, even though the object of his desire is a former porn queen drug addict.) If you miss the wild abandon of a former Almodovar regular, Carmen Maura, with whom he has fallen out, you also sense that she would be out of place in this more sober milieu. |
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Bless his heart, Almodovar does succumb to the temptation to tweak us every so often. He's the joke teller who can't resist giggling before he gets to the punchline. There is a TV commercial about the plight of Spanish pensioners that is wildly hilarious as well as delicately satirical--Almodovar rarely delivers direct political broadsides--and reminiscent of Woody Allen's early, anarchic comedies. What's disappointing about the film, overall, is that you miss the foolhardy daring of Almodovar's earlier work. Tie Me Up! may not have any of the lows of Matador or What Have I Done to Deserve This?, but it has none of the highs either. There's nothing to rival the sheer nihilistic rush of the seduction scene in Matador (a sexual bullfight in which the woman scores a direct hit on her conquest at the moment of the climax), or the intensity of romantic passion in Women on the Verge (in which the dejected Carmen Maura torches her faithless lover's bed). The parallels between romantic fetishism and religious ritual--Spanish Catholicism and Latin machismo are never very far apart in any of his films--are a bit studied here. When he juxtaposes the exalted sadomasochism of the church's iconography (bleeding, enthorned sacred hearts) with images of the enslaved heroine (Victoria Abril's character is named Marina, and is seen writhing in fear, and later sexual passion), you can see what he's saying, but you wish he hadn't felt the need to spell it out. Big statements are the territory of mediocre talents; Almodovar's forte is innuendo. What is even more curious is that Almodovar doesn't use his intentionally limited palette to say anything new. The director's universe is small, consisting mainly of the Spanish urban middle-class, some of whom (like the Banderas character in Tie Me Up!) were born in poor, rural villages, as was Almodovar himself. The spectre of 40 years of Franco's fascism has always been an absent presence in his films, never referred to directly, but always there in the subtext--unlike the heavy-handed political allegories of other Spanish filmmakers such as Saura and Aragon. But even within his limited universe, Almodovar has always deftly exposed the residents of that world. Tie Me Up! is not as nimble. Almodovar's themes are well-chosen; his characters revel in freedom, but you're also given to understand how perplexed they are by it--the appeal of the old morality, however constraining, remains strong. The problem is that Almodovar has said all this before, and said it better. |
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Almodovar may be getting a bit puffed up from all the praise he's received. Constant comparisons to a genius like Bunuel will do that. Or he might seriously be trying to experiment with his obsessions as other great filmmakers--Truffaut, Fassbinder, Hitchcock--have done. Tie Me Up! may be a transitional film, an attempt to dredge old terrain for new meaning, an example of on-the-job training, preparation for better films to come. Almodovar could also be reacting to the criticism leveled at him in Spain over the farcical nature of Women on the Verge, for which he was accused of selling out, trying to go commercial. If so, he should tell the critics (all of them) to lay off. Tie Me Up! may also signal that Almodovar has said all he wants to say about the new Spain for now. He recently announced that he will be moving from his home base in Madrid, where he has been one of the leaders of the arts movement, La Movida, to live in New York. Few foreign filmmakers have crossed the channel and successfully met the challenge of making films about a less homogeneous society. Many have quietly come and gone, confused by the intricacies of America's cultural melting pot, homesick, or frustrated by the demands of the American filmmaking business. It will be interesting to have Almodovar working on our turf, even more interesting to see what he uncovers. The distance may also provide objectivity about the new Spain, which he'll be able to draw upon when he returns. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. |