Courtship via the method laid out in that most respected S&M manual, The Collector -- of imprisonment-until-capitulation. The suitor is fresh out of a mental institution, with a haircut to prove it, and his selected dreamgirl is an actress in a grade-B horror film -- of which the set and its trappings (wind machine, cutlery props, etc.) provide some early fun, though not really very much of it, and not for very long. The entire plot, commencing with the hero's easy access to the film set, to the heroine's dressing room, to her apartment, and onward, is so facilely and frictionlessly worked that the provocation inherent in it is slid over with scarcely a snag. Its element of bondage, which doubtless will disturb and offend those who go out of their way to seek disturbance and take offense, is explicitly brought in for practical and not preferential reasons. And of course the director, Pedro Almodóvar, and his loyalists will be ready to deflect the disturbed and offended with stuff about the ropes and handcuffs being "metaphors" and "symbols" of any intimate relationship. And the extraneous second half of the film's title -- tie her down, you see, as in tie the knot or the ties that bind -- added to the original Atame! for the American market is plainly meant to guide viewers gently to that way of seeing things. Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Francisco Rabal. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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