PLOT OUTLINE | CAST | CREW | CRITICS/AWARDS | COMMENTS OF PEDRO PHOTOS

THE LAW
It's something cooking on our backs, something abstract imposing an exact price you can't ignore.
Some laws are avoidable, but others aren't. For example, one jumps out the window with his licit will to fly, and there comes the law of gravity; no matter how you despise it, you'll end up flat on the ground in a few seconds.

THE DESIRE
The vulgar meaning of desire is to have someone head-over-heels in love with you; to be someone's favorite from all the possible dishes; to make someone forget about their metaphysical, social, politic or financial problems threatening today's world the moment they take you in their arms. But desire is something else. Speaking in absolute terms, one wants to own someone's soul as well as body. I admit it might turn uncomfortable; no one would stand being someone's everything because, among other things, that would prevent us from living our own life. Despite being a contradiction in itself and no matter whether you are respected as a person or not, the illusion of being unlimitedly loved lives in every human being's heart.

ONE, TWO, THREE SLAVES OF DESIRE.
… that's saying a lot, but when I write I don't want my characters to be anything's nor anyone's slave. But desire definitely determines their actions, pleasure and pain.

Three are the main characters in the law of desire (I like that number, 3. It's like the Once upon a time in tales. Saying one, two, three always starts something. "Pepi, Lucy, Bom…" were three women and the beginning of my career, for example).

ONE
Pablo Quintero (Eusebio Poncela). Ever since he ways a kid Pablo has dreamed with being subject for an absolute desire that matches his own. He knows that's impossible, but that doesn't stop him. He's never satisfied, but being an artist he fights that non-satisfaction turning it into the main topic of his creation. Allies with his Olympia keys, Pablo develops his unsatisfying life. That's his main passion, his therapy, his cross. Sometimes he dares do it in his private life. Like when he writes Juan telling him the letter he wants to get. Creation applied to his life is a double-edged boomerang.
His imagination is stronger then his feelings, and work arises more intense emotions than life -even though his is a life-based work. He knows that should he set his desires loose, he would end up falling into the horrible abyss. With a mix of common sense and good cowardliness he frenziedly and unlimitedly develops on his typewriter everything he doesn't in his life. He's unaware of the fact that by carrying such an activity he will eventually face the same dangers, because real passion is always nonreversible; developing on your skin or on a blank sheet of paper, the risks are always the same.

TWO
Antonio Benitez (Antonio Banderas) is a one-piece character. Passion impregnates every action of his. He's capable of anything: killing, lying… he would place the world at risk if that's what it took to exchange a kiss or a word with the object of his passion. He's a fanatic and, to someone whose only moral is the vital expression of that passion, he can't be judged rationally because his logic isn't so. However, there aren't many characters as clear, pure and solid as Antonio. But (and this is what makes him richer) his is a traditional education, even conservative -education is like garment, it disappears when you take it off. He's incredibly strong. Like faith for Christians, desire moves mountains. Antonio knows that society is going to make him pay a price too high, but he doesn't care. As all fanatics, he dies alright, like a hero, because there are no good or bad heroes, just human beings capable of extraordinary actions.

Pablo and Antonio are different, but there is something they share unconsciously: their lack of fear. Both take chances all the way, the difference being that Pablo stays bound to his typewriter and with his heart beating between the keys while Antonio just owns his own body. That's the advantage of not being an artist, life is all he has. Both must pay the same price but, having no intermediaries, Antonio has enjoyed his passion better. And he hasn't suffered as much because there wasn't so much to play with.

THREE
Tina Quintero (Carmen Maura) is Pablo's sister, a self-made woman -born a boy she changed her sex later. The most feminine thing about Tina is her paranoia. Women usually complain about life and men being unfair to them. And that's true sometimes: after going to live with her father, changing her sex for him and then being abandoned, it's not unusual for Tina to feel so miserable. But the bad thing is that far from mitigating the pain, she feeds it daily; because there are people who find in pain their most precious dish, even if that prevents them from tasting other feelings.

Like her brother, Tina doesn't fool herself; but she lives in frenzy movement. She knows she's not what she is, and claims her right to invent her reality -because manufactured reality is not as good as the other. She distrusts humanity because she feels humanity distrusts her. Her paranoia is as clear as it is wrong; not being trusted as a girl is not her problem, her problem is she doesn't trust the others. If her father-lover fooled her, what to expect from the others, those who don't carry her same blood after all?

Tina was wide open when passion rang her door. She acted carelessly and that daringly happy overdose finally left its imprint. The memories of her generous answer help her to live but prevent her from enjoying life as well. Happiness and horror are printed on the same page. We all make up our own weapons when horror takes over; forgetting and insanity were Blanche Dubois'; Tina's is the worship of memories, -because memories were pleasure and then wound. Helpful insistence on the most distressing memories is the punishment Tina has sentenced herself to expiate a sin she's never regretted. That's a great virtue, and that's why she's still alive, because she's not regretful. Flawlessly miserable Tina shall keep going, moaning but going.

Because Desire is a streetcar going nowhere; it's movement that matters.

FRATERNITY
When Wim Wenders decided to win the heart of the Americans and the general audience, he made a story about the family; a melodrama with an absent mother and a redeeming brother, plus a straight-haired boy. The family never fails. I found that out when I shot "¿Que hecho yo para merecer esto?". People began looking at me with different eyes, sort of like "he's modern, but sensible." The family is always first-rate dramatic material. I focused "¿Qué he hecho yo…" on the Mother figure. I'm focusing on the Brothers now.
I didn't know what type of fraternity to opt for when I started writing the screenplay: a musical with twins (in the style of the Kessler sisters or Pili and Mili, or "The Family Way" by lovely Hayley Mills). The problem with twins is finding the appropriate actors. Also, the topic is an easy victim for stall interpretations, and I wanted these twins to be totally different and independent.
Another possibility was the Marx Brothers type of fraternity but, can you picture the Marxs in a film about Desire? I can't write it, but I wish I did! Given my temper, I turned for reference to Warren Beatty and Barbara Eden in "Splendor in the Grass." So different but equally miserable, supporting one another in an unbreathable America.
I've always been sensitive to stories of siblings; even in those with a good main love story, my interest was always on the siblings. I weep buckets in "Cotton Club" when the black brothers meet in a club and dance together again the way they used to before turning famous. And in "Rumble Fish" I would dream about playing a nonexistent sister of M. Rourke and M. Dillon just to witness this last imitating Rourke. I love it when younger brothers take the elder as models.
Apart from the twins, I also discarded the incestuous thing for being too obvious. Fraternity doesn't need sex to be manifest, and sex simplifies the stories that deal with it. "La ley del deseo" had to be something else: a desert with all the jungle's dangers.
Like the Kessler sisters, Pablo and Tina are the type of siblings working on the show business. Like Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter, they are attracted to the same man. And like Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell, they support one another when necessary. They are heads and tails of the same coin; Heads (Tina) had to pay a price too high for being herself, and Tails (Pablo) suffered the unbearable load of his own conscience and talent.