74
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
10(91%)
mixed
1(9%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 11 Critic Reviews
100
These four characters are put through typical Almodovarian comic paces, in this spectacle of flamboyant melodrama, murder, and amnesia.
100
It’s thrilling, the plot unfolding like pages in an airport paperback — or perhaps, given all the sultry intercourse, a harlequin romance gone wrong.
By Oliver Skinner
FULL REVIEW 90
This is one of the rare movies that's sensually exciting at the same time that it's funny.
80
Law of Desire is truly bravura in its driving pace and nonchalant tone.
80
Seventh feature by a Spanish writer/director hitherto unknown in this country: a lush, overblown, steamy, tragi-comedy murder thriller set in Madrid, there's something to offend and delight everyone.
By Staff (Not Credited)
FULL REVIEW 75
Drama/comedy of romantic obsession, with Eusebio Poncela as a writer-director of gay sex comedies, Carmen Maura as his transsexual "sister" and Antonio Banderas as his infatuated lover/fan. [15 Sep 2006, p.C5]
70
Spain's master of pop and pastiche, Pedro Almodovar, turns his talents here to a gay love triangle, with extraneous touches of fantasy farce and camp humor. Pic also has a certain outrageous look to it which makes the antics more palatable.
By Staff (Not Credited)
FULL REVIEW 67
Capably directed by Pedro Almodovar, but oppressively squalid. [24 Apr 1987, p.21]
63
Pedro Almodovar’s vibrant treatment of gay life in post-Franco Madrid has a lot to recommend it, but little of this has to do with its contrived plot, which bears a queasy resemblance to the earlier Fatal Attraction and resorts to hackneyed devices such as amnesia.
63
Law of Desire never shows quite the spark of life, however perverse, that has characterized Almodovar's works to this point. [13 Feb 1987, p.D10]
