Madrid. Ricky is released from a mental asylum and immediately goes to a film set where actress Marina is wrapping up the finale of a horror film by director Maximo. Ricky follows Marina that night to her apartment and forcefully enters, ties her up, and says that he will remain there until she falls in love with him, after which they will have kids. Since Ricky kicked her head to silence her scream, Marina's tooth hurts, so they go outside to get some painkillers. After Ricky returns beaten up by a street gang, Marina has ptty on him and they have sex. When Ricky goes out to steal a car, Marina's sister Lola enters the apartment and unties Marina. They flee, but Marina changes her mind, finds Ricky in his native village, and they start a relationship.
A bizarre blend between Stockholm syndrome, romantic comedy and BDSM, "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" is one of those movies that aged badly—the director Pedro Almodovar embarkes in misguided gaslighting since the story about a woman tied up in her own apartment romanticizes the kindapper way too much. It's a pity, because so many scenes are very well directed, with dynamic and unusual camera angles and crazy, comical ideas (while trying to break out, Marina even takes He-Man toys (!) on a shelf to try to smash the window), but its concept simply blocked the movie from a greater grade right from the start. That is an often debate in Almodovar: his bizarre movies lack a more normal counterbalance, while his normal movies lack more bizarre outbursts. The two main actors, Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril, are excellent, though, as Ricky and Marina, and one almost wishes they were in a different setting with a more honest love story. The opening act, which depicts Marina starring in a horror movie directed by Maximo, bound to a wheelchair, is full of creative outbursts. For instance, in the dressing room, Marina takes her underwear off from her dress, leading to this exchange with Lola: "I'm taking my panties off. They show" - "What's worse, that your panties are visible or your pussy?" While Marina is on her all fours on the movie set, Maximo observes her from the floor, as she asks him: "Why are you staring at me like that?" - "I'm not staring. I'm admiring you."
The sole sequence shown in this fake horror film is when Marina interacts with a man in a Gladiator-like costume, wearing a mask on his face, who came to take her away, which foreshadows the main plot point of the movie—except that here, Marina throws a cord over the man, runs out the window and hangs on the balcony, as the other end hangs the villain. The main story sets in, and in all of its awfulness, wrecking the movie. Ricky is a misguided character, and it is never clear what Almodovar wanted to say with him that he couldn't have said with a more proper, adjusted character in a normal romantic comedy. He is so impulsive he is almost a caricature. In one scene, Ricky threatens Marina not to say anything to anyone about her captivity: "If you tell anything, I'll kill you and then I'll kill myself. I have nothing, so I have nothing to lose." That Banderas managed to recover from such a character is a testimony to his talent and luck in his later career. The message that some aggressive men are just "clumsy" at expressing themselves and accidental brutes, but that that deep down inside they are honest and just want love, isn't coming across. The ending and the "rehabilitation" thus do not feel earned. Still, Almodovar has so many moments of humor and wacky ideas that he is able to engage the viewers throughout, and the sex sequence between Marina and an injured Ricky is brilliant. "Tie me Up!" is only for the "Fifty Shades of Grey"-side of audience, though it hints at a lot more potential and talent among their authors.
Grade:++
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