Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! - Reception

Reception

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Almodóvar’s eighth film, was completed in late 1989. Its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in early 1990 was inauspicious. The projector broke down and in the following press conference Almodóvar, whose films have not been well understood in Germany, was subjected to heavy questioning about his homosexuality, drug abuse, and the Spanishness of his film.

Released in Spain in January 1990, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! was an enormous success, becoming the biggest grossing domestic film of its year, reaching an audience of over a million. It had twice the audience of the most critically acclaimed Spanish film of that year, Carlos Saura’s ¡Ay Carmela!, a film starring Almodóvar’s former muse Carmen Maura.

The film was generally well received by the Spanish critics. Lluis Bonet, writing in La Vanguardia, called the film "a terrible tender love story", agreeing with the director that the best scene was that in which Marina, initially held hostage by Ricky against her will, finally asks to be tied up by him so she will not be tempted to flee from the love he has successfully provoked in her. Critic Javier Maqua in Cinco Dias called Marina’s request evidence of "the greatest intensity of love". Rosy de Palma, who plays a drug dealer in the film, explained that the film’s kidnapping was not to be imitated in real life and was only justified by the "exceptional nature of the characters".

British critics took time to warm up to Almodóvar’s films and dismissed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. Lawrence O’Toole in Sight and Sound, described it as:" fairly banal, schematic and essentially humorless".

In the United States, the film seemed to offend American puritanism with a lengthy sex scene and by a couple of sequences in which Marina and later her sister Lola sit on the toilet to urinate. Particularly controversial was the shot of Marina in a bath tub pleasuring herself with a scuba diver toy. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! was entangled in a rating classification battle and was the subject of heated debate. Eventually released unrated, the film was decried by feminists and women's advocacy groups for what they perceived as its sadomasochist undertones and victimization of women. Nevertheless the film grossed $4,087,361 at the North American box office, a respectable amount for a foreign language film.