A deeply twisted gay romance is at the heart of Pedro Almodóvar first truly great film, a sexy, dangerous thriller with superb performances from Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura.
Law of Desire opens with an unashamedly erotic scene of gay sexual desire and keeps the passion up until the end credits in his marvellous noir-tinged tale that puts an obsessive stalker (Antonio Banderas), a lovelorn gay porn director (Eusebio Poncela) and his caring trans sister (Carmen Maura) at the centre of a heady dark thriller.
The Movida movement, the cultural explosion that took place in Spain following the death of Franco, was well under way when Almodóvar made his ground-breaking seventh film. His cunning gender play – he casts cisgender actor Maura as a trans character and trans actor Bibiana Fernández as her cisgender niece – is as playful as ever and it deservedly won the first ever Teddy Award, awarding the best queer cinema, at the Berlin Film Festival.