Law of Desire: A Queer Film Classic (Queer Film Classics) - Softcover

José Quiroga

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551522624 ISBN 13: 9781551522623

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009

Synopsis

“This series will be a significant, valuable contribution to the history and literature of gay cinema. Each of these works will be valuable additions for academic and popular students of film and gay culture.”—Library Journal

Law of Desire, one of three inaugural titles in Arsenal Pulp Press' new film book series Queer Film Classics, focuses on the 1987 homoerotic melodrama by Pedro Almodóvar, Spain's most successful contemporary film director.

The film Law of Desire is a grand tale of love, lust, and amnesia featuring three main characters: a gay film director (played by Eusebio Poncela); his sister, an actress who was once his brother (Carmen Maura); and a repressed, obsessive stalker (a young Antonio Banderas). In the twenty-plus years since its first release, Law of Desire has been acknowledged as redefining the way in which cinema can portray the difficult affective relationships between homosexuality, gender, and sex. Taking his cue from the golden age of Latin American, American, and European melodrama, Almodóvar created a sentimental yet hard-edged film that believes in the utopian possibilities for new relationships that redeem people from their despair. Since its release, Almodóvar has become an Oscar-winning filmmaker who regularly delves into issues of sexuality, gender, and identity.

This book examines the political and social context in which Almodóvar created Law of Desire, as well as its impact on LGBT cinema both in Europe and around the world.

José Quiroga is a professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Emory University in Atlanta.

The Queer Film Classics series, starting this fall, consists of critical yet populist monographs on classic films of interest to LGBT audiences written by esteemed film scholars and critics.

About this title

About the Author:

José Quiroga is a Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Emory University in Atlanta. He has written extensively on Latin American and Latino popular culture, media, literature, and queer studies. His books include Cuban Palimpsests (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) and Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America (New York University Press, 2001).

Review:

The film’s twists and turns, the director’s bold color scheme, and the layers of meaning to be found in the film are meticulously detailed by Quiroga.
—EDGE Publications (Boston, Chicago, etc.) (EDGE Publications 2009-11-10)

[Quiroga] views the narrative within larger social, sexual, and cultural contexts, and his supporting analyses of specific scenes, cinematic elements, and dialog reflect his extensive research, as do his references to other works by director Pedro Almodovar.
—Library Journal (Library Journal 2009-12-02)

Arsenal Pulp Press launched its Queer Film Classics series last fall, and may we say? It’s about time. While the film world has produced critical analyses of movies by and about LGBTQ people and subjects, an attempt to assemble works on the most influential of those movies has not been attempted. It’s rare and exciting to see a series like this come to fruition... Quiroga takes the long view on Almodóvar’s career, examining how his early work fed into his Oscar-winning and internationally renown pictures of the late 1990s without losing its unique queer perspective and nuanced takes on gay relationships, something that only the Spanish "movida" movement could have made possible to show onscreen.
—EDGE Publications (EDGE Publications 2010-01-31)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1551522624
• ISBN 13: 9781551522623
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120