# Law of Desire
*Law of [Desire](https://www.edgepedia.org/desire-epbfb6s1qc)* (Spanish: *La ley del deseo*) is a 1987 Spanish melodrama-thriller written and directed by [Pedro Almodóvar](https://www.edgepedia.org/pedro-almodovar), following a gay film and theater director, Pablo Quintero, whose new relationship with an obsessive young lover, Antonio, collides with his love for the distant Juan and with the life of his trans sister Tina, an actress.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) It was the sixth film of Almodóvar's career and the first produced by El Deseo S.A., the company he founded with his brother Agustín, for which the director took out a personal loan and assumed all the financial risk.[2](https://elpais.com/smoda/moda/2024-08-21/la-historia-de-aquel-vestido-de-carmen-maura-en-la-ley-del-deseo-o-como-una-casualidad-hizo-historia-del-cine-espanol.html) • [3](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title / director | *La ley del deseo*, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar |
| Release | Spain, 7 February 1987; first Almodóvar film to premiere outside Spain[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) • [1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) |
| Principal cast | Eusebio Poncela (Pablo Quintero), Carmen Maura (Tina Quintero), Antonio Banderas (Antonio Benítez), Miguel Molina (Juan)[5](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Ley-del-deseo-La) |
| Format | Original screenplay, 102 minutes, Spanish language, rated NC-17 in the United States[5](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Ley-del-deseo-La) |
| Spanish box office | 201,931,187 pesetas from 638,646 spectators, the number-four national production exhibited in Spain in 1987[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) |
| Recognition | Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival; received no awards in Spain and was ignored at the Goyas[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) |
| Significance | First production of El Deseo; first part of Almodóvar's self-fiction trilogy with *La mala educación* (2004) and *Dolor y gloria* (2019)[3](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) • [4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) |
## Spoilers
### Story and characters
Pablo Quintero (Eusebio Poncela) writes and directs plays and films and is in love with Juan (Miguel Molina), a young man who leaves and will not answer Pablo's letters. Pablo takes up with Antonio ([Antonio Banderas](https://www.edgepedia.org/antonio-banderas)), who grows jealous of Pablo's love for Juan, seeks Juan out, and sets off a chain of violence that leaves Pablo grieving and temporarily without memory. When his memory returns, Pablo learns that Antonio has taken up with Tina, and he hurries to her rescue.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/)
Tina Quintero (Carmen Maura) is Pablo's sibling, a trans woman raising the girl Ada and trying to make it as an actress. In the film she reveals to Pablo that she began her transition because she was in love with her father and that it was he who asked her to do so.[6](https://digibuo.uniovi.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10651/51134/TD_IvanGomezBeltran.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=2) Pablo, meanwhile, works on a play about his sister's life while Antonio intercepts the correspondence between the former lovers and erupts into rage.[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire) [Sony Pictures](https://www.edgepedia.org/sony-pictures)' synopsis also notes Pablo's practice of writing Juan's love letters himself and having Juan mail them back with his signature.[8](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
## Production: El Deseo's first film
**A new production model.** *Law of Desire* was the first film Almodóvar produced through El Deseo, the company he co-founded with his brother Agustín, who left his teaching job to produce it. Agustín later described the intuition that Pedro needed a self-managed production model to match the kind of artist he was; after the success of the next film, *Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios* (1988), El Deseo became the reference production company of Almodóvar's filmography.[3](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/) • [9](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml) To finance the picture, Almodóvar requested a personal credit and assumed all the risks himself.[2](https://elpais.com/smoda/moda/2024-08-21/la-historia-de-aquel-vestido-de-carmen-maura-en-la-ley-del-deseo-o-como-una-casualidad-hizo-historia-del-cine-espanol.html)
The crew included cinematographer Ángel Luis Fernández, editor José Salcedo, and costume designer José María de Cossío.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/) One costume became part of Spanish film history by accident: the red dress Carmen Maura wears was bought at the Madrid store Blanco for 2,000 pesetas (about 12 euros at the time of the account) because the production needed a practical dress that could get wet, according to de Cossío; no one involved expected it to enter the collective imagination, and its later whereabouts are unknown.[2](https://elpais.com/smoda/moda/2024-08-21/la-historia-de-aquel-vestido-de-carmen-maura-en-la-ley-del-deseo-o-como-una-casualidad-hizo-historia-del-cine-espanol.html)
## Release and reception
The film opened in Spain on 7 February 1987, restricted to audiences over 18, and earned 201,931,187 pesetas from 638,646 spectators, ranking fourth among national productions exhibited that year; Spanish television did not broadcast it until April 1991.[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) It was the first Almodóvar film to premiere outside Spain, and international art-film distributors bought it, beginning the international expansion of the "Almodóvar" brand.[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) • [9](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml)
**Berlin, 1987.** At the 37th [Berlin International Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/berlin-international-film-festival) the film was screened out of competition in the Panorama section. *El País* critic Ángel Fernández-Santos reported that the Berlin audience packed the Zoopalast's Atelier and interrupted the film ten times with standing ovations, while the two competing films shown the same day were received coolly; he attributed the festival's relegation of the film to its violence and depth, which did not suit the taste of "the diplomats of cinema".[10](https://elpais.com/diario/1987/02/26/cultura/541292405_850215.html) The film won a Teddy Award at the festival, and the comparison drawn with [Rainer Werner Fassbinder](https://www.edgepedia.org/rainer-werner-fassbinder) positioned Almodóvar internationally as a gay filmmaker.[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522)
At home the reception was colder: the film received no awards in Spain and was ignored at the Goya awards, even as foreign critics took notice.[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) A theatrical release in the United States followed on April 3, 1987, distributed by Cinevista under the English title *Law of Desire* with an NC-17 rating.[11](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0093412/) • [5](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Ley-del-deseo-La) Antonio Banderas's gay kiss in the film prompted front-page headlines in the Brazilian press.[8](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
## Queer subject matter and context
Scholarship on the film stresses how early it addressed its subject. In a 2026 chapter of *The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar* (Manchester University Press), Ana María Sánchez-Arce contends that, ahead of the 1990s rise of queer trans studies and trans theory, the film addresses LGBTQ+ concerns against the backdrop of the AIDS panic. At the time, homosexuality was criminalised in Spain and the situation of LGBTQ+ communities was precarious; the film highlights this taboo by making stereotypes about gay men and trans women central to the mistakes the police make while investigating a murder, and by turning viewers into detectives of the characters' traumatic pasts.[12](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/other-voices-other-stories-la-ley-del-deseo/372EA1746C69129B90921C18A17EC047) A later study similarly places the film within post-Francoist Spanish cinema's depiction of "liberated homosexualities".[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522)
The scholar Paul Julian Smith has quoted Almodóvar repeating during production and release that it was not a film about homosexuality, "but of love in general, of the couple and even of the family".[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) The literary scholar José Quiroga, writing about the film, described it as the first time he had seen a movie that "was not about the homosexual right to love [...] but about homosexual desire".[13](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24741604.2023.2166741)
## Place in Almodóvar's work
*Law of Desire* is counted as the first part of a self-fiction trilogy with *La mala educación* (2004) and *[Dolor y gloria](https://www.edgepedia.org/pain-and-glory)* (2019), and it was Almodóvar's first film with male leads.[4](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522) [Jean Cocteau](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-cocteau)'s play *La Voix humaine* (1930), which Almodóvar adapted into English for *The Human Voice* (2021), had already inspired *Law of Desire* and *[Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown](https://www.edgepedia.org/women-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown)*.[13](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24741604.2023.2166741) Critics' consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, where the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 13 reviews, calls it "kinky fun that's as explosively bright and provocative as ever".[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire) It was later included in the 2006 "Viva Pedro" theatrical retrospective series in the United States.[11](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0093412/)
## References
1. [Law of Desire (La ley del deseo), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/401384/)
2. [La historia de aquel vestido de Carmen Maura en 'La ley del deseo', El País SModa (2024)](https://elpais.com/smoda/moda/2024-08-21/la-historia-de-aquel-vestido-de-carmen-maura-en-la-ley-del-deseo-o-como-una-casualidad-hizo-historia-del-cine-espanol.html)
3. [Nosotros, El Deseo](https://www.eldeseo.es/nosotros/)
4. [David Bernal-Salgado (2024), "La Ley del Deseo; masculinidades posfranquistas, homosexualidades liberadas", Estudios LGBTIQ+ Comunicación y Cultura 4(2)](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/article/download/98393/4564456571522)
5. [La ley del deseo (1987), The Numbers](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Ley-del-deseo-La)
6. [Iván Gómez Beltrán, doctoral thesis materials, Universidad de Oviedo](https://digibuo.uniovi.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10651/51134/TD_IvanGomezBeltran.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=2)
7. [Law of Desire, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/law_of_desire)
8. [Law of Desire, Sony Pictures Entertainment](https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/lawofdesire)
9. [Agustín Almodóvar: "Hemos perdido el derecho moral sobre nuestras películas", RTVE.es (2014)](https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20140112/agustin-almodovar-hemos-perdido-derecho-moral-sobre-nuestras-peliculas/845400.shtml)
10. [Ángel Fernández-Santos, "'La ley del deseo', de Pedro Almodóvar, aclamada por el público berlinés", El País (26 February 1987)](https://elpais.com/diario/1987/02/26/cultura/541292405_850215.html)
11. [Law of Desire (1987), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0093412/)
12. [Ana María Sánchez-Arce, "Other voices, other stories: La ley del deseo", in The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Manchester University Press (2026)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/other-voices-other-stories-la-ley-del-deseo/372EA1746C69129B90921C18A17EC047)
13. ["Narcissism and Bad Faith in Pedro Almodóvar's La ley del deseo (1987)", Journal of Homosexuality / Taylor & Francis (2023)](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24741604.2023.2166741)
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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 › Erotic thrillers and dramas*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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