Labyrinth of Passion
Encyclopedia
Labyrinth of Passion is a 1982
Spanish
screwball comedy
written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
. Starring Cecilia Roth
, Imanol Arias
and Antonio Banderas
. The plot follows a nymphomaniac pop star who falls in love with a gay Middle-Eastern prince. Their unlikely destiny is to find one another, overcome their sexual preferences and live happily ever after on a tropical island
. The film is an outrageous look at love and sex, framed in Madrid
of the early 1980s, during the so called Movida madrileña, a period of sexual adventurousness between the dissolution of Franco
's authoritarian regime and the onset of AIDS
consciousness.
ern country). Both are strolling around Madrid’s flea market, aiming to pick up lovers. Sexilia takes five men for an orgy, where she is the only woman. In the hope of curing her nymphomania and her fear of the sun, she is undergoing psychotherapy
. However, her psychoanalyst, Susana, is far more interested in sleeping with Sexila’s father, Doctor de la Peña, a gynecologist specializing in artificial insemination
. As the doctor is frigid, Susana does not have a chance with him. One of Doctor de la Peña patient's is Princess Toraya, the ex-wife of the former Emperor of Tiran. Flicking through a magazine, Toraya discovers that her stepson Riza Nero is also in town. Thanks to treatment by Sexilia’s father, Toraya is now fertile for the first time in her life. Since the emperor’s sperm is currently unavailable to her, she will settle for that of his son, Riza, whom, she attempts to track down.
In Madrid, Riza is living incognito, constantly wearing a wig and dark glasses. He gets involved first with Fabio, a young junkie transvestite. Later he meets Sadec on the street and the two go to Sadec’s place for a tryst. Ironically, Sadec is a member of a group of terrorists looking for Riza, but fails to recognize him in disguise. When Riza realizes that Sadec is also from Tiran, he decides to change his hair and clothes in order to protect his anonymity. With Fabio’s help, Riza transforms his appearance to a punk. Sexilia and Riza, who knew each other when they were children, meet again, when Riza, disguised as “Johnny”, is performing as the lead singer with a punk band in the absence of one of their regulars. That night, they fall in love but do not sleep together. The two opt for a chaste relationship since each wants this relationship to be “different.”
Making time in her busy schedule for her laundry, Sexilia meets Queti, a young woman 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. In search of consolation, Queti dresses up in the clothes of her role model Sexilia. One day Sexilia spots Queti in the street wearing one of her outfits and confronts her. They become friends. Queti tells Sexilia about the problem with her father and Sexilia tells her that she cannot stop thinking about Riza. Sexilia and Riza mutual adoration has “cured” Riza’s compulsive homosexuality and Sexilia’s nymphomania. Queti and Sexilia hatch a plan: they agree to swap identities so that Queti can escape her father’s sexual abuse and take on the role of Sexilia for real. This would allow Sexilia to escape with her lover Riza. However, Toraya finally catches up with Riza and seduces him. When Sexilia goes to Riza’s hotel, she finds Toraya and Riza together. Riza tries to convince her that sex with Toraya was only practice for the real thing with her, but Sexilia is distraught. The knowledge of Riza’s infidelity drives Sexilia to her psychoanalyst. Under therapy, Sexilia discovers that Toraya was responsible for both her childhood traumas and her nymphomania in the same incident that made Riza gay. Rejected by her father, she had had sex with a group of boys on the beach, while Riza looked on. Sexilia meets up with Queti, who after plastic surgery has taken her place. Queti persuades Sexilia to give Riza another chance.
Sadec, who has a highly developed sense of smell and has fallen head over heels in love with Riza, is looking for him everywhere. Sadec’s roommates, Islamic extremists, plan to kidnap Riza. Queti warns Sexilia and Riza of the danger and, when Toraya and the Islamic extremists arrive at the airport, Riza and Sexilia are already on the plane bound for Contadora, a tropical island. Back in Madrid, Queti, now Sexilia’s look-alike, sleeps with the latter’s father, whom she has always fancied, while he believing her to be Sexilia, achieves his aim of truly loving his daughter. At the airport Sadec and his companions, having lost Riza, kidnap Toraya. On the airplane Riza and Sexilia make love for the first time.
. Produced by Alphaville, a distribution company which from 1979 had four cinemas in central Madrid
dedicated to the screening of independent films, Labyrinth of Passion enjoyed a much larger budget, more sophisticated technical resources and more lavish publicity than its predecessor Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980). However, critically, the film fared badly, much worse than Pepi, Luci, Bom.
“Positively bristles with vibrant colors and a wildly comic sexual energy” wrote Marsha Kinder in Film Comment
. Nevertheless, critical reaction was generally negative. Writing in El Periodico
, JL. Guarner suggested that : “The story is nothing more than a series of episodes, summarily linked, and what we have come to call cinema plays little part in it. The bizarre plot does not live up to its promise, for its weakened by parallel subplots which weave in and out of it more or less haphazardly.
Almodóvar said about Labyrinth of Passion: " I like the film even if it could have been better made. The main problem is that the story of the two leads is much less interesting than the stories of all the secondary characters. But precisely because there are so many secondary characters, there's a lot in the film I like ".
as an influence and has described the film as a “ wild comedy, with lots of action and lots of characters… but without Billy Wilder’s bite, because this is a very pop film. In the context of pop he has also referred to the work of Richard Lester
, of A Hard Day’s Night
fame: “ films set in the city where every thing is very banal: girls and boys fall in love a lot, suffer a lot, but their suffering never involves real pain”. Thirdly, he was influenced by the romantic melodramas of the 1950s, of which the series of films called Sissi the Empress
was a prime example. The film was particularly inspired by the Shah of Iran
, who at the time was still living. Almodóvar imagined the son of the Shah coming to Madrid and used another key figure in the gossip columns, Princess Soraya
, who became Toraya in the film. Through them, the director explains: I wanted to tell the story of a couple that has difficulties developing their relationship. These difficulties stem from the fact that the man and the woman share the same sexual behavior.
Almodóvar has also suggested that in making Labyrinth of Passion he experienced: The difficulty of presenting a relationship in a light hearted way when beneath the surface, there lies a certain sadness .
Making a massive technical improvement on Almodovar’s first feature, Labyrinth of Passion set the tone and style for the films that established his name. A gallery of colorful characters engages in an amusingly complex plot, which concludes with a taxi-cab race to the airport (reworked in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
). A fresh-faced Antonio Banderas (who starred in a number of Almodovar’s later films) made here his film debut as a gay terrorist, gifted with a hyper sense of smell that he uses it to track down a Prince with whom he has fallen in love. The film is notable also for Almodóvar’s appearance in full drag as a nightclub compeer. The director also plays himself at the beginning of the film in a short scene in which he directs a young transvestite junkie to butcher himself with a drill for a photo strip entitled Photo Porno Sexy Fever.
Writing the script Almodóvar’s idea was to present Madrid
as the world’s most important city, a city everyone came to and where anything could happen. One draft of the script had Dalí
and the Pope meeting and falling passionately in love. That story was eventually cut, but it summed up the general idea.
Labyrinth of Passion was made during the golden age of the Madrid movida, between 1977 and 1983, and almost all the key figures of the movement – painters, musicians – are part of the large cast.
Depicting the hedonism of underground music venues and gay cruising grounds, the daring script shows Almodóvar’s enthusiastic embrace of Spain’s new-found freedom of expression. For this reason, the film retains an emblematic power in Spain.
It ran for ten years on a midnight run at Madrid’s Alphaville cinema, but was released in the United States
, England
, France
and Italy
only after the success of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
with English
subtitles.
1982 in film
-Events:* March 26 = I Ought to Be in Pictures, starring Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret and Dinah Manoff is released. Manoff would not appear in another movie until 1987's Backfire.* June = PG-rated film E.T...
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
screwball comedy
Screwball Comedy
Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...
written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular...
. Starring Cecilia Roth
Cecilia Roth
Cecilia Roth is an Argentine actress.Her father, Abrasha Rotenberg , a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Ukraine, is an editor and a journalist. He met Cecilia's mother, an Argentinian singer of Sephardic descent Dina Rot, in Argentina. Cecilia Roth has made appearances in numerous television series...
, Imanol Arias
Imanol Arias
Imanol Arias born Manuel María Arias Domínguez , is a Spanish actor and one off film director.Imanol Arias began his career with a travelling theatre group in Spain performing in the Basque Country of northern Spain. He debuted on TV in 1976 and his first film was in "Cecilia " of 'Humberto Solas'...
and Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas
José Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer...
. The plot follows a nymphomaniac pop star who falls in love with a gay Middle-Eastern prince. Their unlikely destiny is to find one another, overcome their sexual preferences and live happily ever after on a tropical island
Isla Contadora
Isla Contadora is a Panamanian island on the Pearl Islands archipielago in the Gulf of Panama...
. The film is an outrageous look at love and sex, framed in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
of the early 1980s, during the so called Movida madrileña, a period of sexual adventurousness between the dissolution of Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's authoritarian regime and the onset of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
consciousness.
Plot
Sexilia ("Sexi") is a pop star and sex addict; Riza is the gay son of the Emperor of Tiran (a fictional Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern country). Both are strolling around Madrid’s flea market, aiming to pick up lovers. Sexilia takes five men for an orgy, where she is the only woman. In the hope of curing her nymphomania and her fear of the sun, she is undergoing psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
. However, her psychoanalyst, Susana, is far more interested in sleeping with Sexila’s father, Doctor de la Peña, a gynecologist specializing in artificial insemination
Artificial insemination
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination...
. As the doctor is frigid, Susana does not have a chance with him. One of Doctor de la Peña patient's is Princess Toraya, the ex-wife of the former Emperor of Tiran. Flicking through a magazine, Toraya discovers that her stepson Riza Nero is also in town. Thanks to treatment by Sexilia’s father, Toraya is now fertile for the first time in her life. Since the emperor’s sperm is currently unavailable to her, she will settle for that of his son, Riza, whom, she attempts to track down.
In Madrid, Riza is living incognito, constantly wearing a wig and dark glasses. He gets involved first with Fabio, a young junkie transvestite. Later he meets Sadec on the street and the two go to Sadec’s place for a tryst. Ironically, Sadec is a member of a group of terrorists looking for Riza, but fails to recognize him in disguise. When Riza realizes that Sadec is also from Tiran, he decides to change his hair and clothes in order to protect his anonymity. With Fabio’s help, Riza transforms his appearance to a punk. Sexilia and Riza, who knew each other when they were children, meet again, when Riza, disguised as “Johnny”, is performing as the lead singer with a punk band in the absence of one of their regulars. That night, they fall in love but do not sleep together. The two opt for a chaste relationship since each wants this relationship to be “different.”
Making time in her busy schedule for her laundry, Sexilia meets Queti, a young woman 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. In search of consolation, Queti dresses up in the clothes of her role model Sexilia. One day Sexilia spots Queti in the street wearing one of her outfits and confronts her. They become friends. Queti tells Sexilia about the problem with her father and Sexilia tells her that she cannot stop thinking about Riza. Sexilia and Riza mutual adoration has “cured” Riza’s compulsive homosexuality and Sexilia’s nymphomania. Queti and Sexilia hatch a plan: they agree to swap identities so that Queti can escape her father’s sexual abuse and take on the role of Sexilia for real. This would allow Sexilia to escape with her lover Riza. However, Toraya finally catches up with Riza and seduces him. When Sexilia goes to Riza’s hotel, she finds Toraya and Riza together. Riza tries to convince her that sex with Toraya was only practice for the real thing with her, but Sexilia is distraught. The knowledge of Riza’s infidelity drives Sexilia to her psychoanalyst. Under therapy, Sexilia discovers that Toraya was responsible for both her childhood traumas and her nymphomania in the same incident that made Riza gay. Rejected by her father, she had had sex with a group of boys on the beach, while Riza looked on. Sexilia meets up with Queti, who after plastic surgery has taken her place. Queti persuades Sexilia to give Riza another chance.
Sadec, who has a highly developed sense of smell and has fallen head over heels in love with Riza, is looking for him everywhere. Sadec’s roommates, Islamic extremists, plan to kidnap Riza. Queti warns Sexilia and Riza of the danger and, when Toraya and the Islamic extremists arrive at the airport, Riza and Sexilia are already on the plane bound for Contadora, a tropical island. Back in Madrid, Queti, now Sexilia’s look-alike, sleeps with the latter’s father, whom she has always fancied, while he believing her to be Sexilia, achieves his aim of truly loving his daughter. At the airport Sadec and his companions, having lost Riza, kidnap Toraya. On the airplane Riza and Sexilia make love for the first time.
Cast
- Cecilia RothCecilia RothCecilia Roth is an Argentine actress.Her father, Abrasha Rotenberg , a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Ukraine, is an editor and a journalist. He met Cecilia's mother, an Argentinian singer of Sephardic descent Dina Rot, in Argentina. Cecilia Roth has made appearances in numerous television series...
… Sexilia - Imanol AriasImanol AriasImanol Arias born Manuel María Arias Domínguez , is a Spanish actor and one off film director.Imanol Arias began his career with a travelling theatre group in Spain performing in the Basque Country of northern Spain. He debuted on TV in 1976 and his first film was in "Cecilia " of 'Humberto Solas'...
… Riza Niro - Helga LinéHelga LinéHelga Liné is a German-born Portuguese-Spanish film actress and circus acrobat best known for her work in the horror genre of film. She made 132 appearances mostly in film between 1941 and 2006, but most of her work has been in Spanish cinema.-Biography:Helga Line was born as Helga Lina Stern on...
… Toraya - Marta Fernández Muro … Queti
- Antonio BanderasAntonio BanderasJosé Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer...
… Sadec - Fernando Vivanco … Doctor de la Peña
- Ofelia Angélica … Susana
- Luis Ciges … Queti’s father
Reception
Almodóvar ’s second film received its premiere on 29 September 1982 at the San Sebastián International Film FestivalSan Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
. Produced by Alphaville, a distribution company which from 1979 had four cinemas in central Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
dedicated to the screening of independent films, Labyrinth of Passion enjoyed a much larger budget, more sophisticated technical resources and more lavish publicity than its predecessor Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980). However, critically, the film fared badly, much worse than Pepi, Luci, Bom.
“Positively bristles with vibrant colors and a wildly comic sexual energy” wrote Marsha Kinder in Film Comment
Film Comment
Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world...
. Nevertheless, critical reaction was generally negative. Writing in El Periodico
El Periódico
El Periódico is Spanish for "The Journal" and may refer to*El Periódico de Catalunya *El Periódico...
, JL. Guarner suggested that : “The story is nothing more than a series of episodes, summarily linked, and what we have come to call cinema plays little part in it. The bizarre plot does not live up to its promise, for its weakened by parallel subplots which weave in and out of it more or less haphazardly.
Almodóvar said about Labyrinth of Passion: " I like the film even if it could have been better made. The main problem is that the story of the two leads is much less interesting than the stories of all the secondary characters. But precisely because there are so many secondary characters, there's a lot in the film I like ".
Analysis
Almodóvar has mentioned Billy WilderBilly Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
as an influence and has described the film as a “ wild comedy, with lots of action and lots of characters… but without Billy Wilder’s bite, because this is a very pop film. In the context of pop he has also referred to the work of Richard Lester
Richard Lester
Richard Lester is an American film director based in Britain. Lester is notable for his work with The Beatles in the 1960s and his work on the Superman film series in the 1980s.-Early years and television:...
, of A Hard Day’s Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
fame: “ films set in the city where every thing is very banal: girls and boys fall in love a lot, suffer a lot, but their suffering never involves real pain”. Thirdly, he was influenced by the romantic melodramas of the 1950s, of which the series of films called Sissi the Empress
Sissi (film)
Sissi is a 1955 film directed by Ernst Marischka and starring Romy Schneider, Karlheinz Böhm, Magda Schneider, Uta Franz, Gustav Knuth, Vilma Degischer and Josef Meinrad. It is the first of a trilogy of romantic films about the Empress of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria, who was known to her family...
was a prime example. The film was particularly inspired by the Shah of Iran
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, who at the time was still living. Almodóvar imagined the son of the Shah coming to Madrid and used another key figure in the gossip columns, Princess Soraya
Soraya Esfandiary
Princess Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari was the second wife and Queen Consort of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran.-Birth:...
, who became Toraya in the film. Through them, the director explains: I wanted to tell the story of a couple that has difficulties developing their relationship. These difficulties stem from the fact that the man and the woman share the same sexual behavior.
Almodóvar has also suggested that in making Labyrinth of Passion he experienced: The difficulty of presenting a relationship in a light hearted way when beneath the surface, there lies a certain sadness .
Making a massive technical improvement on Almodovar’s first feature, Labyrinth of Passion set the tone and style for the films that established his name. A gallery of colorful characters engages in an amusingly complex plot, which concludes with a taxi-cab race to the airport (reworked in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a 1988 Spanish black comedy film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas...
). A fresh-faced Antonio Banderas (who starred in a number of Almodovar’s later films) made here his film debut as a gay terrorist, gifted with a hyper sense of smell that he uses it to track down a Prince with whom he has fallen in love. The film is notable also for Almodóvar’s appearance in full drag as a nightclub compeer. The director also plays himself at the beginning of the film in a short scene in which he directs a young transvestite junkie to butcher himself with a drill for a photo strip entitled Photo Porno Sexy Fever.
Writing the script Almodóvar’s idea was to present Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
as the world’s most important city, a city everyone came to and where anything could happen. One draft of the script had Dalí
DALI
DALI may refer to:* Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries* The "Distance-matrix ALIgnment" algorithm used in the FSSP database on structurally similar proteins* Digital Addressable Lighting Interface* Dartmouth Assessment of Lifestyle Index...
and the Pope meeting and falling passionately in love. That story was eventually cut, but it summed up the general idea.
Labyrinth of Passion was made during the golden age of the Madrid movida, between 1977 and 1983, and almost all the key figures of the movement – painters, musicians – are part of the large cast.
Depicting the hedonism of underground music venues and gay cruising grounds, the daring script shows Almodóvar’s enthusiastic embrace of Spain’s new-found freedom of expression. For this reason, the film retains an emblematic power in Spain.
It ran for ten years on a midnight run at Madrid’s Alphaville cinema, but was released in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
only after the success of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
DVD release
Labyrinth of Passion is available in Region 2 DVD in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
subtitles.
References
- Allinson, Mark: A Spanish Labyrinth : The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, I.B Tauris Publishers, 2001, ISBN 1-86064-507 - 0
- Edwards, Gwyne, : Almodóvar: labyrinths of Passion. London: Peter Owen. 2001, ISBN 0-7206-1121-0
- Strauss, Frederick Almodóvar on Almodóvar, Faber and Faber, 2006, ISBN 0-57123-192-6