Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (¡Átame!)

"Though initially rated X and hotly debated, it’s a tale not of kinky sex, but of a sweeter human bondage, of loose ends tied into lover’s knots." – Rita Kempley, Washington Post

Actress, former porn star, and drug addict Marina (Victoria Abril) has just finished shooting a horror film. Psychopath Ricki (Antonio Banderas), who once slept with Marina and has been released from a mental institution, plans to track her down, hold her hostage, and make her fall in love with him. From initially resisting captivity to helping her captor tie her up, Marina experiences a complete turnaround in this comedic, erotic, and disturbing case study in Stockholm syndrome.

Following the success of our recent retrospective of Spain’s revered filmmaker, we were deluged by requests for additional gems from Almodóvar’s middle period - some say his finest - which we’re hastening to oblige. As in our original program, all titles have been painstakingly restored to their original splendor. Launching this limited one-week series will be Dark Habits (Entre tinieblas), the film that introduced the maverick director’s work in the US with its premiere at the first Miami Film Festival in 1984. Enjoy!

Program notes adapted from MoMA’s Almodóvar retrospective.

Check out the rest of our Almodóvar II program!