Narcissism and Bad Faith in Pedro Almodóvar’s La ley del deseo (1987)

Abstract

Pedro Almodóvar’s first film in English, The Human Voice (2021), was adapted from Jean Cocteau’s La Voix humaine (1930), which had already inspired two of his earlier films: La ley del deseo (1987) and Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988). Drawing on French continental philosophy, this article examines how La ley del deseo approaches the themes of narcissism, bad faith, reciprocity and existential availability, which were already present in Cocteau’s work. Additionally, the conclusion argues that La ley del deseo can be read as prophetic in that its discourse on self-absorption still resonates today.