Labyrinth of Passion
| Labyrinth of Passion | |
|---|---|
Original poster by Iván Zulueta
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| Directed by | Pedro Almodóvar |
| Produced by | Luis Briales |
| Written by | Pedro Almodóvar |
| Starring |
Cecilia Roth Imanol Arias Helga Liné Marta Fernández Muro Antonio Banderas |
| Music by | Bernardo Bonezzi |
| Cinematography | Angel Luis Fernández |
| Edited by | José Salcedo |
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Production
company |
Musidora
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| Distributed by | Alphaville |
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Release date
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Running time
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100 minutes |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish |
| Budget | ESP 21,000,000 |
| Box office | ESP 98,650,920 (Spain) |
Labyrinth of Passion (Spanish: Laberinto de pasiones) is a 1982 Spanish screwball comedy written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Cecilia Roth and Imanol Arias. Antonio Banderas has a small role marking his film debut.
Labyrinth of Passion, Almodóvar's second film, was independently produced with a shoestring budget which allowed for better production values than his previous film Pepi, Luci, Bom, and to employ a more complex narrative.
The plot follows a nymphomaniac pop star who falls in love with a gay Middle-Eastern prince. Their unlikely destiny is to find one another, overcome their sexual preferences and live happily ever after on a tropical island. Although badly received by Spanish film critics, Labyrinth of Passion was a modest success and quickly reached cult film status. The film is an outrageous look at love and sex, framed in Madrid of the early 1980s, during the so-called Movida madrileña, a period of sexual adventurousness between the dissolution of Franco's authoritarian regime and the onset of AIDS consciousness.
Sexilia ("Sexi") is a pop star and sex addict; Riza is the gay son of the Emperor of Tiran (a fictional Middle Eastern country). Both are strolling around Madrid's flea market, aiming to pick up lovers. Sexilia takes two men for an orgy, where she is the only woman. In the hope of curing her nymphomania and her fear of the sun, she is undergoing psychotherapy. However, her psychoanalyst, Susana, is far more interested in sleeping with Sexila's father, Doctor de la Peña, a gynecologist specializing in artificial insemination. As the doctor is frigid, Susana does not have a chance with him. One of Doctor de la Peña's patients is Princess Toraya, the ex-wife of the former Emperor of Tiran. Flicking through a magazine, Toraya discovers that her stepson Riza Nero is also in town. Thanks to treatment by Sexilia's father, Toraya is now fertile for the first time in her life. Since the emperor's sperm is currently unavailable to her, she will settle for that of his son, Riza, whom she attempts to track down.
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Wikipedia