Saturday, August 30 screening: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) d. Pedro Almodóvar

 After he’s released from a psychiatric ward, kleptomaniac Ricky has plans to go straight – land a job, get married and raise a family. He has his sights on a girl he fell in love with years ago in a memorable one-night stand – former porn star, Marina, who’s trying to go straight herself, acting in a mainstream horror movie while fighting off a heroin addiction. Ricky’s plan to win her heart is simple: he’ll stalk her, knock her unconscious, and keep her tied down in her apartment until she has no choice but to fall in love.

That may sound like a description of a very dark, twisted thriller, or, perhaps, a pitch-black comedy, but the interesting thing about Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is how delicately it resists tipping too far in either direction. Ricky, played by a young Antonio Banderas, is clearly mentally unstable and dangerous. He’s also childlike, occasionally charming, and looks like a young Antonio Banderas. As Marina struggles with her captivity, a bond form between them, blurring the lines between obsession and affection.

This is the world of Pedro Almodóvar, a Spanish director whose films are constantly blurring these lines. After his international breakthrough, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1989), Miramax was eager to distribute his next movie for American audiences, only to be dismayed when the MPAA slapped an X rating onTie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, a death sentence for a film with mainstream aspirations. In fact, one of the film’s lasting legacies is how it eventually paved the way for the NC-17 rating.

Ironically, the MPAA didn’t really have that much objection to Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’s plot or moments of violence. It seemed more outraged by a depiction of masturbation, a scene unlikely to show up in the type of thrillers American audiences were seeing at the time. In truth, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! doesn’t look or feel anything like a cold, stark thriller, with scenes bursting of color, humor, and lots of sex.

There’s no denying, though, that Tie Me Up! Time Me Down! flirts with dangerous ideas about love, obsession, and power imbalances. Some viewers are likely to come away thinking depiction is endorsement, but Almodóvar's film never tips its hand one way or the other, and Marina, right until the end seems unsure of what to make of her predicament, leading to a mysterious conclusion.

 If you like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, check out…

Talk to Her (2002)

d. Pedro Almodóvar

Almodóvar remained a cult figure in cinephile circles after Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! but achieved mainstream recognition with Talk to Her which won him an Academy Award for best screenplay -- a rarity for a non-English film. Talk to Her contains a lot of similar themes as his earlier film, including loneliness, obsession, and the complexities of communication and love as it follows two men both caring for women in comas. Talk to Her , however, is a lot less playful than Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, opting for a subtler, more melodramatic tone, while never losing grasp of the thorny dynamics at play in the film's "romances."

The Graduate (1967)

d. Mike Nichols

Without giving too much away, it’s hard not to see Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’s ambiguous ending owing a debt to The Graduate’s similarly cryptic final shot – one of the great film endings in cinema history. Mike Nichols’ 1960s classic probably won’t seem nearly as edgy to modern audiences, but its depiction of power dynamics in a May-December relationship was plenty racy for its time. It also shares a push-pull of comedy and luridness that would categorize some of Almodóvar’s best work. Its also got a killer soundtrack.

 Phantom Thread (2017)

d. Paul Thomas Anderson

A plot description of Paul Thomas Anderson's fantastic Phantom Thread reads like many films about "great men" who suffer for their art, and the women who must stand by silently to tend to his ego so they can achieve their masterpiece. What's great about Anderson's film is how it upends that power balance, adding a wrinkle -- and a level of kink -- into what is largely depicted on screen as a passion without sex. Daniel Day-Lewis is great as a prickly dress designer in 1950s London, but Vicky Krieps, playing his lover, is the real tour-de-force in this mesmerizing, occasionally surreal romance that ends up every bit as subversive as Almodóvar’s film.