"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" and the Horrors of Addiction (and Relationships)

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a film about addiction. Though it seems like a psycho-sexual drama, it often plays more like a horror film. The return of the repressed, Marina's (Victoria Abril) former heroin addiction, comes in the form of Ricky (Antonio Banderas). Ricky is obsessed with Marina, after a previous one night stand that she can't even recall, and kidnaps Marina in order to make her fall in love with him. Much of this plays out in protracted sequences where Ricky threatens Marina's life and limb if she does not cooperate with his crazed fantasy. After leaving a mental ward, Ricky sets about stalking her, like a horror villain eying his prey. Ricky believes he can will her into growing feelings for him. Through some unsettling Stockholm Syndrome, Marina begins slowly falling for her captor, embracing his disturbing sense of affection and romance. The highs and lows of Marina's twisted relationship with Ricky parallel those of her former addiction. Marina is beaten, bruised and mishandled, and yet unable to will herself to escape Ricky's clutches, as she finds herself oddly and strongly turned on by him. Granted, Ricky has a strong sexual magnetism of the Stanley Kowalski variety (He is, after all, Antonio Banderas). But it still doesn't distract from how alarming his actions are, no matter how erotically charged they may be.

The film opens itself up to be read this way by having Marina be a featured star in a horror movie. It's meant to be her big break into acting, after a career in pornography. Though she's been ostensibly exploited and objectified due to her former profession, the stigma carries with her. The aging director claims her as a muse, but his real motives appear to be getting her to desire him. But everyone in the film is strung up on some obsession or desire. Marina's sister wishes to be noticed by the director, but she is continually overlooked and never taken seriously. A journalist does interviews on the set of the horror film, only for us to discover she's done it as an excuse to "run into" an ex-boyfriend. Everyone is judging their self-worth based on their appearances or their sexual prowess. Oddly enough, Ricky never describes his interest for Marina in these terms, but it doesn't make the rest of his behavior any more tolerable.

But the film isn't using eroticism for the sake of eroticism. It's equating the power of Marina's addiction to an almost sexual control over her. "I don't know how to explain it," she tells her sister about the relationship, but that's because most people who've never had a drug addiction, or an abusive relationship, for that matter, hardly can begin to grasp what the person's experiencing. All that matters to the addict is getting the next fix; it doesn't matter how aware they are of the detrimental and destructive effects of their disease. They will pursue getting their high at any cost. Abusive relationships work in a similar regard to addiction in that people will find ways to justify or overlook their mistreatment or blame it on themselves rather than taking action against it and help themselves. It's this latter suggestion that writer-director uses for black comedic effect, pointing out the absurdity of the entire scenario. And it's ultimately through the film's humor that the unbearability of the premise becomes diffused.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! feels like an incomplete film. It's unfocused, taking too long to get started up and finishing on a weirdly anticlimactic note. But there are still the nuggets of some great ideas throughout about relationships, addiction, obsession and genre.

Grade: ★★★