Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990 romantic movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A mental patient kidnaps an actress, suggests that they get married, and refuses to take no for an answer.

I've got to start with this since I'm a pervert: I have a new favorite sex scene, the bathtub scene in this movie featuring the lovely Victoria Abril and a wind-up diver toy. That's worth the price of admission alone. I guess my problem with this one is that the movie had to be about Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril and their characters' relationship and not more about Maximo Espejo, the director played by Francisco Rabal. He gets a great line though: "When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal." I might have that put on my tombstone. Banderas is fine, but the lead characters lacked depth, and their love story was actually pretty boring, despite all the bondage. Morricone's score is dull, 80's fizz. There is a nifty and colorful musical number with a trumpeter who has a mini-pompadour, cheese-covered keyboards, an old lady, a young girl, and a polka-dotted lead. And there's some He-Man figure decor which, for whatever reason made me laugh a little bit. But if I ever watch this again, it'll be for the toy diver scene which makes me cry just thinking about it.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

1988 comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An actress attempts to confront her actor boyfriend who has decided to leave her. She's got a suitcase full of his things and wants to talk to him before he leaves on a trip. His wife, his son, his son's girlfriend, the actresses friend who happens to be dating a terrorist, and the actor's new mistress all get involved. It's madness!

My favorite character in this is the blond mambo cab driver who has a mini-convenience store in his taxi. Like the rest of the movie, he's like a gaudy cartoon, his hair clashing with everything else on the screen. At one point, he's told to "follow that cab," and he replies, "I thought this only happened in the movies." His experience was just like mine. Most of what happens in this farcical black comedy would only happen in a movie. And there's not much you see in this film that looks like anything in real life. Almodovar uses color here as well as any director I've ever seen. In fact, this movie is really more about colors and shapes than it is about the characters and what they're doing. There are so many scenes that showcase Almodovar's visual creativity, his unique vision. The wife's profile as she rides on a motorcycle. Projected light cutting the screen in half horizontally. Two policemen simultaneous sipping gazpacho. A shot of a character in a telephone booth with another character obliviously storming past while, in the background, a third character ominously approaches. And my favorite--the shot of the mambo cab driver crying. As my regular four-and-a-half readers know, I'm a sucker for visuals, and this is a feast for the eyes from beginning to end. The story started difficult and at first, I thought I was going to have difficulties connecting with so many women characters, but their story bounces around wonderfully and is consistently surprising and very very funny.