Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (¡Átame!, 1990) is Pedro Almodóvar's provocative tragicomedy, available to watch online on iFILM. This Spanish romance chases love by the strangest route imaginable: a kidnapping and a length of rope.

Ricky (Antonio Banderas) walks out of a psychiatric hospital with a single plan, to build himself an ordinary family. The woman he fixates on is Marina (Victoria Abril), a former adult-film actress and recovering addict he spent one night with years ago. He breaks into her apartment, ties her to the bed and holds her captive, certain that given enough time she will come to love him. The deeply uncomfortable trick of the film is that his twisted logic slowly starts to work.

Almodóvar made his most morally slippery film here, prodding the line between love, captivity and dependency, and it was this picture that pushed the United States to create the NC-17 rating. His trademark candy palette, pitch-black humor and regular troupe, Rossy de Palma among them, somehow bend a disturbing premise toward tenderness. Not for everyone, but essential for anyone tracing early Banderas or Spanish arthouse. Stream Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990) online on iFILM.