Labyrinth of Passion

This is one of Almodóvar's first films, made in the early 80s, and it shows. Although it lacks polish, the meticulous plot is very impressive – zipping along extremely quickly, and winding around a large cast of outlandish characters before wrapping them all up in a satisfying bundle at the end.

There is a coherent shape to the film provided by the opening and closing shots. It begins with high-angles of two characters wandering around a market looking to hook up. Sexilia, a nymphomaniac, eventually invites a bunch of men to an orgy. Riza, a Middle Eastern prince living in exile, picks up a guy at at cafe. At the end of the film, Sexilia and Riza are enjoying their first sexual experience together on a plane soaring into the sky – the former converted to monogamy, the latter abandoning his homosexuality. The tropical island they are flying to is a heteronormative paradise. Sexual deviancy is left behind in Madrid.

That's a slightly weird ending for a film that otherwise celebrates the counter-culture that blossomed after the fall of Franco, with its camp discos and punk rockers. Probably the most outrageous subplot involves a girl enlisting Sexilia's help to escape from her father, who rapes her every two days. The girl gets plastic surgery that transforms her into Sexilia's double, and allows her to assume her identity while the real Sexilia elopes with Riza. Ironically enough, the new 'Sexilia' ends up back in an incestuous relationship, although a consensual one, with Sexilia's dad.

Almodóvar seems to suggest that the sexual lives of his characters are shaped by their particular histories. You may run away from incest but it will find you again. Similarly, Sexilia's nymphomania is an extended rebound from feeling rejected by Riza when they were on a beach holiday as children. Riza's homosexuality is also a result of feeling rejected by Sexilia. The two are destined to be together, but a misunderstanding as children has led them down alternate, delinquent paths. Sexual identity is both fluid – in that frigidity, homosexuality or nymphomania can all be 'cured' – and also fixed by the laws of romantic destiny. Sexilia and Riza are star-crossed lovers. All the fun in between is a swerve away from that fate.

Which makes the bubbling sexuality in Madrid portrayed by the film provisional, incomplete. The hunger for hookups in the street-market crowd is something the main couple literally fly away from. The skies provide the setting for the sexual union perfected. The rest of the characters have to muddle through on the ground, constantly shape-shifting but never quite finding contentment. Perhaps Sexilia and Riza's transformation into an ideal couple presents a longing for escape that always feels slightly out of the reach of the punks and queens of Madrid.

Almodóvar has said that his two main characters remain undeveloped because the film keeps getting distracted by its subplots and outlandish co-stars. Those diversions, chronicling the subculture of a very particular time and place, are what make the film interesting 30 years on.


Wings of Desire

Hard to escape the impression that the angels in this film are mostly an extended metaphor for the camera. They don't do anything so crass as fly around. All of that is saved for the impressive crane shots around the library, across apartment blocks and over walls. That sense of floating omnipresence is communicated as much by the way the camera moves as the silent men in trench-coats hovering over the variously occupied people of Berlin.

What does it mean? Perhaps it's Wenders's way of trying to get across the way photography both reveals and distances you from the objects being photographed. Bruno Ganz isn't content with observing and recording other people's experiences. He wants to step into the frame and become a participant.

Not to get too David Thomson here, but it's no surprise that the angel's temporal desires become focused on a woman. She is a trapeze artist, already far more graceful in the air than Ganz could ever be. There's an interesting switch-around between the two, in that Ganz begins the film observing Berliners from the top of a cathedral, and ends it looking up at the object of his devotion. He trades omnipotence for submission, a transcendent (and silent) God for an immanent goddess. Wings of desire are liable to fall off and leave you grounded.

Object is the right word. I found Solveig Dommartin lovely but also absurd, the final consummation between her and Ganz close to laughable. It doesn't help that it occurs at a Nick Cave concert (that pompous vortex of toxic masculinity is not a sustainable model for romance). Her monologue is an egregious abuse of language, meaning and the viewer's patience. Wenders would have improved his film immeasurably if he had left the cod-poetry behind with the black-and-white, and tried to convey a sense of reality, with real people in it.


Tokyo Story

This is a long film, and it accrues significance with each scene. The effect is something like the epiphanies Joyce builds to in his Dubliners short stories, except that here the first one hits about half way through, with each scene after that adding fresh ones.

For the father, it's when he gets drunk with some old friends and the mask of respectability slips. He's finally able to be honest, and reveal his disappointment with his children. But unlike his more impatient drinking buddies, he at least realises that his expectations may be too high.

For the mother, it's when she stays over with her son's widow Noriko, after being turned out of her daughter's house. There she urges Noriko to let go of her late husband, and try to find a new partner. (The devoted young woman who refuses to marry and stray from her family is a recurring Ozu motif).

The final big whammy concerns Noriko herself – not a blood relative, yet does more for her adoptive parents than their own sons and daughters. Why? The sense of duty she displays is overwhelming. When she bursts into tears in front of the grandfather at the end of the film, she admits to feeling lonely and worried about the future as a single woman living alone in Tokyo. Although she is ashamed of her wish to move on and find a new husband, it's also obvious that she yearns for the surrogate family she already has, perhaps the only family she has (her own parents are never mentioned – they may have died in the war).

There is something vampiric about the care Noriko shows for her late husband's parents. As she explains to her sister in law, the distance between parents and children grows as time passes. It's a normal development that will happen to her eventually as well. That's why her gift of a watch from the grandfather is such a laden symbol. Time dissolves all attachments. Although given as a memento, it will also serve as her key to freedom.


Say Anything…

More a drama than a comedy, and given that I grew up with American Pie, quite sweet. John Cusack's Lloyd is surrounded by a chorus of supportive girls who only have the job of confirming what a nice guy he is. Seeking male advice is always "a mistake", and the film has some fun with the sexist jocks drinking at the petrol station without a dame in sight.

Cusack always comes in one flavour, a bit like Keanu. Nervous energy, slightly pathetic, intermittently witty. He walks into the film already besotted, on a seemingly impossible quest to win the girl. Ione Skye's Denise is the one with the arc – she gets to choose. But her choice is between the devoted Lloyd and a devoted father. The latter (brilliantly played by John Mahoney – Marty Crane in Fraiser) is a suffocating presence in Denise's life. There are several scenes in which we see the way he uses his devotion as a means of control.

Luckily for Lloyd, the dad proves to be a tax dodging criminal and ends up in jail. He gets the girl by default. But I wonder whether Denise hasn't traded one over-protective parent for another. The film ends with the couple waiting for the airplane seatbelt safety sign to be switched off. Denise has a fear of flying, and Lloyd is hyperactively trying to comfort her. I was left hoping that when Denise gets the seatbelt off, she'd be able to leave these caring men behind, and walk on her own two feet.


House of Tolerance

There are no surprises in this French film eulogising the Belle Époque brothel. Its sights are firmly placed on the lush frills, drapes and ornaments. And the women, who are stuck in the house getting drunk every night and having to sleep with the same tiresome men over and over again. Everyone is too wasted to summon up any kind of wit or personality. Although there is camaraderie among the girls, the prevalent mood is one of grinding frustration and hopelessness.

The film is at its most gruesomely impactful when it slides into horror. The director Bertrand Bornello was inspired by a dream of a film (...very French, that. It's called A Man Who Laughs and I haven't seen it) to include a prostitute disfigured by one of her clients. The grim scars on her face are unsettling, and her assault is difficult to watch. The film begins with it and returns to it several times, and it adds a hint of menace to each gloomy shot of a dimly lit boudoir. There is prevailing sense of predators lurking behind every shadow, although in the end that one psycho turns out to be less lethal than the inevitable spectre of syphilis.

The film's use of symbolism is boringly obvious. You have your petals falling from white roses, and also a surrealistic shot of a whore weeping tears of semen (gross and also a bit ridiculous). It ends with video footage of sex workers in modern day Paris – the implicit question being whether today's streetwalkers have it worse than a hundred years ago. It's not something Bornello seems interested in answering, so asking it feels a bit pointless. But if you needed reminding that prostitution is dreary when it isn't actively frightening, this film does the trick.