Never mind the salacious title. There's not much simulated sex and no nudity at all. It's not a soft-core thriller. What it is, is nicely executed and confusing.
It owes something to Hitchcock, from the credits, which resemble those of Saul Bass, to the lush orchestral score which borrows heavily from Bernard Herrmann, chiefly "Vertigo" and "Taxi Driver." I was half hoping for a lot of the disgusting gratuitous nudity that everyone complains about an it opens promisingly enough -- a group therapy meeting of "sex addicts" in which everyone has a different story. Among the group's member are Javier Bardem and Victoria Avril. Avril's story is that, as a young girl, she helped a butcher tie the knot in his tie just before his wedding. He became excited and balled her three times in the back of the butcher shop. "Everything smelled of meat." Since then she's had one affair after another, even though she's married to a police officer, Carmelo Gomez. I forget what Bardem's story was but it couldn't have been as interesting.
Then all sorts of tsuris follows. I frankly was lost. Bardem has a problem with some kind of illegal tapes -- or something. The few clips we see don't look very illegal. One shows an ordinary boxing match. A dead body turns up in the trunk of an unused car, in the front seat of which Bardem and Avril have been spontaneously coupling, so we're told. (We don't see anything.) Avril's husband, the cop, is trying to track down the murderer and, after discovering his wife's affair with Bardem, does all he can to pin it on Bardem. It leads to some tense moments.
I don't think I'll describe the resolution. At least I understood it, I think. I still don't know exactly how or why it reaches the point it does, but I'm sure of one thing -- it does reach that point.
Bardem is pretty good. I'd only seen him as the cold-blooded hit man in "No Country For Old Men." In that essay, he spoke slowly with a slight gargle in his voice, his face expressionless, his hair combed slantwise over his forehead, his big dark eyes dominating his features. Here, he's a rather ordinary screenplay writer who speaks at a normal tempo and looks like anybody else. I was impressed by the difference in his approach to the two contrasting roles. It's what's meant by "range" in acting.
Victoria Avril is now middle aged, no longer the young lady of "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down", but she's still beautifully and unwittingly sexy. She wears a semi-startled expression throughout, as if she were a frightened bird in a cage. It suits the role.
There are still several points, some of them important, that I'm unclear on, but I've taken steps to correct this by enrolling in a therapy group that promises to promote viewer comprehension.
It owes something to Hitchcock, from the credits, which resemble those of Saul Bass, to the lush orchestral score which borrows heavily from Bernard Herrmann, chiefly "Vertigo" and "Taxi Driver." I was half hoping for a lot of the disgusting gratuitous nudity that everyone complains about an it opens promisingly enough -- a group therapy meeting of "sex addicts" in which everyone has a different story. Among the group's member are Javier Bardem and Victoria Avril. Avril's story is that, as a young girl, she helped a butcher tie the knot in his tie just before his wedding. He became excited and balled her three times in the back of the butcher shop. "Everything smelled of meat." Since then she's had one affair after another, even though she's married to a police officer, Carmelo Gomez. I forget what Bardem's story was but it couldn't have been as interesting.
Then all sorts of tsuris follows. I frankly was lost. Bardem has a problem with some kind of illegal tapes -- or something. The few clips we see don't look very illegal. One shows an ordinary boxing match. A dead body turns up in the trunk of an unused car, in the front seat of which Bardem and Avril have been spontaneously coupling, so we're told. (We don't see anything.) Avril's husband, the cop, is trying to track down the murderer and, after discovering his wife's affair with Bardem, does all he can to pin it on Bardem. It leads to some tense moments.
I don't think I'll describe the resolution. At least I understood it, I think. I still don't know exactly how or why it reaches the point it does, but I'm sure of one thing -- it does reach that point.
Bardem is pretty good. I'd only seen him as the cold-blooded hit man in "No Country For Old Men." In that essay, he spoke slowly with a slight gargle in his voice, his face expressionless, his hair combed slantwise over his forehead, his big dark eyes dominating his features. Here, he's a rather ordinary screenplay writer who speaks at a normal tempo and looks like anybody else. I was impressed by the difference in his approach to the two contrasting roles. It's what's meant by "range" in acting.
Victoria Avril is now middle aged, no longer the young lady of "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down", but she's still beautifully and unwittingly sexy. She wears a semi-startled expression throughout, as if she were a frightened bird in a cage. It suits the role.
There are still several points, some of them important, that I'm unclear on, but I've taken steps to correct this by enrolling in a therapy group that promises to promote viewer comprehension.