Screening sexual and gendered otherness in Almodóvar's Law of Desire (1987)—The real ‘sexual revolution’

Abstract

This study attempts to explore the representation of sexual and gendered Otherness in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema, with special emphasis on La ley del deseo/Law of Desire (1987). In fact in many of his films, the boundaries of sexuality and gender are not clearly delimited; these boundaries are only exposed as idealized cultural constructs that can be transgressed in the cinematic screen, and are used by Almodóvar to destabilize the fossilized cultural structures of tradition. Therefore, in Almodóvar's films a questioning of fixed sexual and gender identities is revealed as well as a forceful proposal for a fluid and flexible construction and expression of sexuality and gender. As I will demonstrate, the film's form elucidates the cultural and political implications of certain modes of discourse in transitional Spain, certain ways of thinking and certain ways of approaching social and personal problems. I will consider to what extent Almodóvar's own sexual identity is interlaced with the representations of homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, transgender and other alternative sexual identities.