Pedro Almodóvar took longer than the average director to reach professional (and personal) adulthood, but, in my opinion, it was worth the wait. I suspect that individuals who have a troubled, flamboyant, or out-of-control youth or young adulthood sometimes are that much richer and more interesting after maturity than people who walked the straight-and-narrow from the beginning. That’s just my opinion. Several of the more recent Almodóvar films, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Tie Me Up! Time Me Down! (1990), All About My Mother (1999), and Talk to Her (2002), have reached the stature of small or large treasures.

Historical Background: Almodóvar began making films in 1974 and had many to his credit before his mainstream breakthrough film of 1988. Some of the early films were clearly experimental in nature and unpolished. All of them, in my opinion, are best understood as Almodóvar’s rehearsal for the big time. I regard his early films in the manner that I might listen to the early works of Mozart. Most of the first hundred or so Mozart pieces wouldn’t even be extant today had Mozart not become a great master. I’m well aware of the fact that a minority of film lovers and Almodóvar fans contend that his early works are his best and that he later effectively “sold out” to the demands of mainstream culture, reigning in his unbridled passions and losing his edginess. It’s true that the early films pushed harder to the very outer limits of sanity and taste, as if the director were on a search for ultimate meaninglessness. My preference for his later films, however, has nothing to do with what his early films are, but with what they are not. I take no exception to Almodóvar’s celebration of promiscuity (Labyrinth of Passion, for example was made pre-AIDS awareness and during a time of post-Franco libertine backlash), the parade of sexual perversions and peccadilloes, the punk poseurs, or the fascination with every manner and means of drug abuse – because it’s all presented with such cartoonish, grand silliness that it’s impossible to take it seriously. An explosion of excess does not necessarily offend, but it is also not enough, taken by itself, to give much meaning to a film. The early films seem to say no more than, “Look at all the daringly risqué stuff I can set out for public display.” In his later films, Almodóvar finally reached a stage where his penchant for the bizarre became simply part of an arsenal for advancing themes far deeper than mere exhibitionism.

Labyrinth of Passion is the best early Almodóvar film that I have seen so far. This summer, I watched another one with some reputation behind it, Matador, planning to review it for Epinions, but it was such worthless trash that I just couldn’t bear writing it up. It was not the sexual perverseness of Matador that disappointed but the inanity of the “plot” and the pitiful performances. By contrast, Labyrinth of Passion, for all its zaniness, is comical and entertaining.

The Story: Riza Niro (Imanol Arias) is a gay prince, son of a deposed emperor of the Islamic nation of Tyran. He is in Madrid incognito in order to frequent the gay hangouts and clubs. He must hide his identity because a group of terrorists wishes to kidnap him in order to recover money stolen by the exiled father. Riza meets Fabio (Fany McNamara, who was Almodóvar’s real-life lover at the time of this film), a transvestite and sniffer of nail polish solvent, at one such meeting place and the two go to Fabio’s place for a quickie. Later, he meets Sadec (Antonio Banderas) on the street and the two go to Sadec’s place for a tryst. Ironically, Sadec is one of the terrorists looking for Riza, but fails to recognize him in disguise.

Next, there’s Sexilia (known as Sexi, for short). She is a beautiful nymphomaniac who struts down the boulevard checking out the pelvises of the young men, front and back. She likes to pick up men, five or ten at a time, for orgies, where she is often the only female. Sexilia’s father (Fernando Vivanco) is a fertility specialist who has developed a technique for artificial insemination. Part of his motivation, it seems, is that he finds the sex thing dirty and disgusting. Sexilia is seeing a rather plump female psychotherapist for her nymphomania and a fear of sunlight, but the therapist is less interested in helping Sexilia than in finding a way to get just a small share of the sexual activity that Sexilia derives daily. The psychotherapist has her eye on Sexilia’s father, in particular, but the doctor is totally frigid. Sexilia performs in a punk group, called “Las Ex,” featuring three women.

Also in town is Toraya (Helga Liné), Riza’s step-mother and the former empress. Thanks to treatment by Sexilia’s father, she is now fertile for the first time in her life. Since the emperor’s sperm is currently unavailable to her, she’ll settle for that of his son, Riza – if she can locate him.

Then, there’s the initially demure and sheltered Queti (Marta Fernandez-Muro), a young women who works in a dry-cleaner owned by her father. Her mother skipped out on her father a few weeks earlier and the father, who takes Vitapens to stimulate his sex drive and potency, pretends to mistake Queti for her mother and binds her to the bed and rapes her on alternate days, despite the fact that Queti regularly laces his tea with a libido-suppressing chemical called Benzamuro.

Rizo goes looking for Fabio, the transvestite, at his place of work because he’s in need of a “make-over” which will serve as a new disguise. Fabian is busy with a porn shoot of a sadistic nature in which his blood spattered chest is featured next to a drill, with Fabian spouting such lines as, “I deserve it, I’m so bad, I’m wicked.” Fabio and another transvestite, Pedro (played by Almodóvar himself), provide an impromptu performance at a punk rock club when the scheduled group, The Melancholics, is a last minute cancellation due to trafficking in white slaves and other misdemeanors. They perform a punk rock song called “Suck It to Me” (written by Almodóvar), which includes the pretty lyrics, “Looking for your warmth, I went down to the sewer and the rats gave me their love.”

Another group at the club is called “Them.” When their lead singer, Eusebio (Ángel Alcázar) slips on a banana peel, Rizo, who chances by, gets a shot at performing with the group and makes a big splash, singing “Gran Ganga”, which is something of a punk rock classic, now, in Spain. Though there is friction between the girls group, “Las Ex”, and “Them”, Sexilio and Rizo experience immediate chemical attraction to one another at first glance. Sexilio can’t keep her mind off Rizo even while later being rogered by two studs at once. Rizo can’t perform with his gay lover for thinking about Sexilio. Soon this veritable odd couple, Sexilio and Rizo – one a female nymphomaniac and the other a gay man – are together, since nature is not to be denied in an Almodóvar film. Perhaps surprisingly, the two opt for a chaste relationship since each wants this relationship to be “different.”

Queti meets her idol Sexilia when the latter brings some clothes in for dry-cleaning. Queti is so taken with one of Sexilia’s sexy dresses that she borrows it for her own use. Sexilia spots Queti on the street, recognizes the dress, and picks Queti up in her taxi. Queti, who is a fountain of information on health and beauty aids, helps Sexilia’s partners in “Las Ex” deal with such assorted complaints as cracked lips and excess flatulence, which allows them to sort out their respective love lives as well. Queti wants nothing more than to be like Sexilia and Sexilia wants to run off with Rizo, so the two strike a bargain. Queti gets plastic surgery so that she is now a dead-ringer for Sexilia. Queti’s new look even fools Sexilia’s father and Queti, already experienced with incest, takes a rather un-daughterly interest in the doctor. Since the doctor’s sexual frigidity (it turns out) was caused by a secret lust for his own daughter, the two are soon a happy, if bizarre, couple.

Meanwhile, the imperial Toraya catches up with her step-son, who obliges with the requisite sperm delivery. Sexilia is duly hurt when she walks in on the tail end of this exchange, but Rizo later explains that he had never previously been with a woman and wanted to be experienced so he could be sure of satisfying the highly experienced Sexilia.

The run-in with Toraya, meanwhile, triggers a psychic breakthrough for Sexilia, revealing not only the cause of her nymphomania and photophobia but, also, why Rizo is gay. [Don’t blame me, this is Almodóvar’s film.] Once, when she was little, she had been playing on a beach with . . . . Rizo. Toraya had come along and dragged him off behind a bush, hoping to seduce the young lad. Sexilia had come looking for Rizo and concluded that he preferred the older Toraya to herself. Out of spite, she had joined a group of five boys in a game of “husband-and-wife.” Rizo had caught up with Sexilia at that point, was despondent to see her attentions taken over by these other boys, but had been comforted by and walked off with one of the lads. So, you see how simple these matters of sexual preference really are!

Back in the present in Madrid, thanks to the envious and traitorous Eusebio, the terrorists have discovered Rizo’s alias and whereabouts and are in hot pursuit. Rizo, Sexilia, and the rest of “Them” race to the airport and are barely able to catch a flight out of Spain to Panama. The terrorists have to settle for kidnapping Toraya instead. As the international flight soars off overhead, we hear Rizo and Sexilia in the throws of passion. “Don’t worry, the others are all asleep.” “You’re the first man I’ve screwed in midair.” Now there’s true love!

Themes: This is not a film for which you want to look too hard for themes. If one took any of it seriously, the implied lifestyle is clearly fraught with dangers – both with respect to the extreme sexual promiscuity and the routine use of chemicals for every conceivable application. Although Almodóvar himself knew and practiced some of the elements of the lifestyle portrayed, he had the good sense to treat it comically rather than promoting it to others.

Production Values: Almodóvar maintains a lively, energetic pace to this film and the settings in Madrid are alive with color and sound. The punk rock music of the soundtrack is generally pleasing. Other than lack of thematic depth, the main weakness of the film is that the plot is a bit out of control, with too many characters and too many subplots.

The performances, I thought, were quite good for a film of this nature. Some played their parts for realism while others (notably Fabio, Toraya, and the shrink) were effectively over-the-top and campy. Cecilia Roth later starred in Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (1999). Imanol Arias later played in The Flower of My Secret and Intruder. Helga Liné had another go around in Law of Desire (1987). The very young Antonio Banderas had a minor part in this film, as Sadec, but has emerged as an international star, including turns in Evita (1996) and The Mask of Zorro (1998).

Bottom-Line: Almodóvar is always outrageous and, at his best, can be brilliant as well. This film lacks the depth of his later work but commands interest as sheer entertainment. I’d like to give the film 3.5 stars because it really doesn't deserve to share the four star rating that I’ve given to some of his better films, but lacking that option, I feel that it is closer to four than three. This film is jam-packed with drug use and all kinds of kinky sexual adventures, so if even comical treatment of such issues tends to offend you, stay clear of Labyrinth of Passion. If you can laugh at bizarre lifestyle excesses, this film will give you plenty to enjoy. Labyrinth of Passion is in Spanish with English subtitles and has a running time of 100 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Spain:

L’Age D’Or
All About My Mother
Belle Epoque
Butterfly
Carmen
Cria!
El
The Grandfather
Sex and Lucía
Spirit of the Beehive
Talk to Her
Thesis
Tie Me Up! Time Me Down!
Tierra
Tristana
Vacas
Viridiana
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age