“Law of Desire,” aka, “La Ley de Deseo”, 18 January 2005 (1987), vhs. Wow, three in one long weekend. Anyway, Bronwen and I enjoyed part of this mess from Pedro Almodovar’s later early period, that is to say, 1987. Unlike his more structured pieces of recent years where, for example, plots sort of make sense, things happen in this that don’t make much sense at all (the exploding typewriter at the end of the movie, for example). Still certain things from this movie presage “Bad Education”. A cool, calm script writer/director (clearly Almodovar talking about himself) confounded by an outside force in the person of a young man who completely disrupts his world. The crazy transsexuals, in this case the directors own sister and former brother, and lots of great weirdness. But this one holds together for about 2/3 of the story before devolving into utter silliness and bad twists and turns. A madcap comedy gone sour in some ways, it’s also a crime story and a stage for Antonio Banderas’s first ‘big’ role as a young man obsessed with the director and willing to do anything to get close and then closer to him. Interestingly, the guy who plays the priest in this one plays the priest who molests the transsexual character as a boy in “Bad Education”. Almodovar’s recent films may be more mainstream but they are also more coherent and more meaningful. As I said, we liked the first 2/3 of this but then it fell apart. Better acted than many of his early films. The woman with the face like the Picasso painting is in this one too!