# La Ley del Deseo
**La ley del deseo** (English: *Law of Desire*) is a 1987 Spanish melodrama-thriller written and directed by [Pedro Almodóvar](https://www.edgepedia.org/pedro-almodovar), starring Eusebio Poncela, Carmen Maura, and [Antonio Banderas](https://www.edgepedia.org/antonio-banderas). It was the first film produced by El Deseo, the production company Almodóvar founded with his brother Agustín, and it marked a turning point in his career as his first film premiered outside Spain and his first with male leads.[1](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) • [2](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522/4564456731550)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | Pedro Almodóvar[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) |
| Production | El Deseo S.A. (74.82%) with Laurenfilm S.A. (25.18%); production year 1986[4](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=7186) |
| Spanish release | 7 February 1987; runtime 102 minutes[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) |
| Cast | Eusebio Poncela (Pablo Quintero), Carmen Maura (Tina), Antonio Banderas (Antonio), Miguel Molina (Juan)[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) |
| Festival | Panorama section, 1987 Berlin Film Festival; Teddy Award winner[1](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) • [5](https://amo.watch/es/movie/la-ley-del-deseo-4043/) |
| Spanish box office | 781,205 admissions; gross of €1,449,524.58[4](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=7186) |
| US rating | NC-17 (nudity, violence, drug and alcohol use, sexual content)[6](https://www.primevideo.com/-/es_419/detail/0MASL5N7NRYRWZ1M16ZIOIEP87) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Pablo Quintero, a successful film and theater director, is in love with Juan, a young man who leaves him and does not return his affection or his letters.[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) During their separation Pablo takes up with Antonio, a possessive young man who has been waiting for the chance to enter Pablo's life permanently and becomes pathologically jealous of Pablo's love for Juan.[7](https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/cine-de-siempre/ley-deseo/5952816/) Pablo asks Juan to keep in touch by letter; ever the director, Pablo plans to write the letters himself and have Juan mail them back signed.[8](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
Antonio intercepts the correspondence and reacts with rage, terrifying Pablo while also inspiring him creatively as he works on a play about his sister.[9](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire) Antonio seeks out Juan, and violence leads to Juan's death; Pablo, pursued by the police as a suspect, suffers an accident and loses his memory.[7](https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/cine-de-siempre/ley-deseo/5952816/) During his hospital stay his sister Tina, a trans actress devoted to her brother, finds the chance to speak at last about the past the two siblings never discuss.[7](https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/cine-de-siempre/ley-deseo/5952816/) When Pablo's memory returns he learns that Antonio has taken up with Tina, and he hurries to her rescue to confront Antonio and his desire.[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/)
Tina, played by Carmen Maura, is the film's emblematic figure: a transsexual woman angry at men, raising a daughter named Ada, and trying to make it as an actress; she began life as Pablo's brother.[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) • [8](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
## Production and El Deseo
**A self-produced film.** On 14 June 1985, Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar founded El Deseo, having just finished *Matador* and deciding to produce Pedro's next screenplay themselves.[1](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) Agustín, who had worked as assistant director on *Matador*, left his teaching career to produce the film, recalling that they had no personal or family resources and were starting from zero.[10](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml) He later described the project as, from a production standpoint, suicidal: a love story between two men that would be controversial for the freewheeling way it handled its subject.[10](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml)
Self-production gave Pedro full creative control, extending the dominion he already exercised over scripts, casting, and costume design to the supervision of production itself; Pedro held the largest share of El Deseo S.A., with Agustín as associate producer.[11](https://encadenados.org/monograficos/no-060-monografico-pedro-almodovar/produciendo-deseos/) The film was made under the then-new Miró Law, which gave Spanish filmmakers greater autonomy, and received support from the Ministry of Culture and the I.M.A.D.E. of the [Community of Madrid](https://www.edgepedia.org/community-of-madrid).[12](https://www.rtve.es/play/noticias/20210629/orgullo-lgtbi-almodovar-peliculas-cine-gay/2108784.shtml) • [4](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=7186) The crew included cinematographer Ángel Luis Fernández, editor José Salcedo, and composer Bernardo Bonezzi.[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) • [13](https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film858909.html)
## Reception and significance
The film premiered in Spain on 7 February 1987 and opened internationally through 1987 and 1988 in Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, and later markets.[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) It was presented in the Panorama section of the 1987 Berlin Film Festival, where specialized press praised it and international distributors showed strong interest; it won the Teddy Award for LGBT-themed cinema.[1](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) • [5](https://amo.watch/es/movie/la-ley-del-deseo-4043/) In the United States it received an NC-17 rating, and Antonio Banderas's gay kiss prompted front-page headlines in the Brazilian press.[6](https://www.primevideo.com/-/es_419/detail/0MASL5N7NRYRWZ1M16ZIOIEP87) • [8](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire) On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer score from 13 critics.[9](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire)
**A turning point in Almodóvar's career.** Scholars identify the film as the first Almodóvar premiered outside Spain, the first with male leads, and the first part of a self-fiction trilogy completed by *La mala educación* (2004) and *Dolor y gloria* (2019).[2](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522/4564456731550) The critic Carlos Losilla, writing in the Instituto Cervantes's dictionary of Spanish cinema, calls it the eighth Almodóvar feature and a perfect summary of his first period, mixing melodrama and thriller in the manner of [Douglas Sirk](https://www.edgepedia.org/douglas-sirk) and [Alfred Hitchcock](https://www.edgepedia.org/alfred-hitchcock), and describes it as his most committed film to a queer ideary close to filmmakers such as [Rainer Werner Fassbinder](https://www.edgepedia.org/rainer-werner-fassbinder) and Derek Jarman.[14](https://cvc.cervantes.es/el_rinconete/anteriores/junio_22/07062022_01.htm) A Cambridge University Press chapter argues that the film explores LGBTQ+ issues in the context of the AIDS panic, before queer and trans theory emerged in the 1990s, at a time when homosexuality was criminalised in Spain; it makes stereotypes about gay men and trans women central to the mistakes the police make while investigating a murder.[15](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/other-voices-other-stories-la-ley-del-deseo/372EA1746C69129B90921C18A17EC047)
In Spanish film history the film is seen as initiating a mode of representation in which homosexuality is important to the characters but not the sole thematic center, a mode with an important precedent in *Laberinto de pasiones* (1982) that was followed by films such as *Las cosas del querer* (1989) and *Alegre ma non troppo* (1994).[16](https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-representacion-de-la-cuestion-gay-en-el-cine-espanol--0/html/ff9e1938-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_3.html) Almodóvar himself later drew on Maura's performance of Cocteau's *La Voix humaine* within the film when adapting *Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios*.[17](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/24741604.2023.2166741) In a 2025 Babelia poll on the best Spanish cinema of the last 50 years, the film ranked 25th, one of seven Almodóvar titles on the list.[18](https://elpais.com/babelia/2025-05-10/almodovar-una-pelicula-para-cada-espectador.html)
## References
1. [Nosotros, El Deseo](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/)
2. [Bernal-Salgado, D. (2024). La Ley del Deseo; masculinidades posfranquistas, homosexualidades liberadas. Estudios LGBTIQ+ Comunicación y Cultura, 4(2), 63-73](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522/4564456731550)
3. [Law of Desire (La ley del deseo), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/)
4. [ICAA Film Database, file 7186](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=7186)
5. [La ley del deseo (1987), Amo](https://amo.watch/es/movie/la-ley-del-deseo-4043/)
6. [La ley del deseo, Prime Video](https://www.primevideo.com/-/es_419/detail/0MASL5N7NRYRWZ1M16ZIOIEP87)
7. [La ley del deseo, RTVE Play](https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/cine-de-siempre/ley-deseo/5952816/)
8. [Law of Desire, Sony Pictures Entertainment](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
9. [Law of Desire, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire)
10. [Agustín Almodóvar: Hemos perdido el derecho moral sobre nuestras películas, RTVE.es](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml)
11. [Produciendo deseos, Encadenados](https://encadenados.org/monograficos/no-060-monografico-pedro-almodovar/produciendo-deseos/)
12. ['La ley del deseo', la película con la que Almodóvar rompió las fronteras de género, RTVE.es](https://www.rtve.es/play/noticias/20210629/orgullo-lgtbi-almodovar-peliculas-cine-gay/2108784.shtml)
13. [La ley del deseo (1987), FilmAffinity](https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film858909.html)
14. [Losilla, C. Diccionario del cine español, 1950-1990 (16): La ley del deseo, Instituto Cervantes](https://cvc.cervantes.es/el_rinconete/anteriores/junio_22/07062022_01.htm)
15. [Sánchez-Arce, A. M. Other voices, other stories: La ley del deseo, in The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Manchester University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/other-voices-other-stories-la-ley-del-deseo/372EA1746C69129B90921C18A17EC047)
16. [La representación de la cuestión gay en el cine español, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes](https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-representacion-de-la-cuestion-gay-en-el-cine-espanol--0/html/ff9e1938-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_3.html)
17. [Narcissism and Bad Faith in Pedro Almodóvar's La ley del deseo (1987), Taylor & Francis](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/24741604.2023.2166741)
18. [Almodóvar, una película para cada espectador, El País](https://elpais.com/babelia/2025-05-10/almodovar-una-pelicula-para-cada-espectador.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1986 to 1989*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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