Review of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Though there are certainly elements of satire to Pedro Almodóvar's controversial 'Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down (1989)', the film is also pretty clearly problematic. The story focuses on an unstable young man who kidnaps a porn actress and tries to force her to fall in love with him (the even more iffy '365 Days (2020)' certainly owes it a debt). At its core, it's about Stockholm syndrome (with a bit of the Nightingale effect thrown in for good measure). This isn't an inherently bad thing, of course, and there's even an argument to be made that the picture knows it's much darker than it presents itself to be. Still, when it comes down to it, the flick ends up presenting its central situation as romance rather than horror, even if it mixes the two together early on. Most of this comes across in its ending, which is kind of gross whether it is intended to be as overtly happy as it is presented to be or if its sugarcoating is meant to be a facade that hides a much more upsetting truth. In a way, it almost doesn't matter if Almodóvar knows it's a sad ending disguised as a happy one. If he expects his audience to see through almost every aspect of the finale's presentation and understand its true intention, he's expecting too much of most people. That's not to imply that those who don't see the double-edged nature of the ending - which, again, may or may not be intentional - aren't smart, just that the rest of the film doesn't really require that sort of thinking. Hopefully, you'll simply be disgusted by the kidnapper and baffled or saddened by the kidnappee's eventual acceptance. In that case, though, the ending will definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth (and be quite hard to believe, too). Generally speaking, the movie is as technically strong and colourful as you'd expect from its prolific director's work. Its performances are solid and its pacing is tight. It isn't a bad movie on the surface. Its messaging, though, is pretty distasteful. At best, its true meaning is too well hidden; at worst, its true meaning is exactly as it seems. It's hard to assign a rating to it, really. If you're able to understand that the actions of the male protagonist are awful, it's potentially worth a watch. If you're not, that's an issue far beyond the scope of a film review.