"Greatness, for me, is an estimable if barely definable quality, and one necessary to members of a civil society, whether minority or majority. Greatness contains within it more than pleasure, more than identification, more than realism: a sense of integrity harnessed to a creative imagination. No, that’s too pretentious. Just give me a point of view! One within which the viewer/reader/listener can discover personal, political and universal meanings."

Mr. Howes has compiled his list of 50 of the greatest gay films. In it, "Law Of Desire" comes in at number 5. His review of the film follows:

Law of Desire: (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 1987)

"Love. Hate. Murder. Revenge. Law of Desire is a devastating satire on the excesses of a film director who loves a boy who can’t love him fully, has a transgender sister who is now bringing up her female lover’s adolescent daughter and a one-night stand he can’t shake off and who proves deadly dangerous to all concerned. Raw sex and offhand social comment are deliciously combined in a salty dish which works equally as thriller, camp send-up or emotional melodrama. The introduction, late in the story, of a father-son pair of detectives, the younger one a physically gorgeous, relentless homophobe, is a masterstroke which keeps the overheated plot ticking over until the ending, with its all out lunacy: gay sex, blasphemy and possible necrophilia. Richly satisfying on all levels.

It is important to mention the contributions Antonio Banderas has made and the special qualities he has brought to gay films, especially those of Pedro Almodóvar. Below are two of the twenty people whom Mr. Howes believes "have made significant contributions to gay cinema through the body of their work or through the gay image they presented in front of or behind the cameras."

Pedro Almodóvar
"Spanish film-maker of mesmerizing talent who has evolved a story-telling style at once sophisticated and naive, cuddly and cunning. All the colours on life’s palette have been utilised: purple passion, black comedy, bloody domestic rage, yellow peril, the blues. Although his directly gay work, apart from the cherishable Law of Desire, is irritatingly sparse, each movie plays with mood, decor, femininity, family and usually some aspect of sexual taboo. Sometimes it seems merely modish, sometimes close to truth and pain. There’s always a live wire running through the most irritating of his conceits, and contemporary cinema is that much richer for bringing us not only his own vivid picture of the mad world but snapshots of gorgeous star-actors Antonio Banderas, Carmen Maura, and Victoria Abril."

Antonio Banderas
"This Spanish heartthrob has contributed three superbly contrasted, full-throttle gay characters, each played with intelligence and passion. The disturbed teenager in his mentor Pedro Almodóvar’s Law of Desire, enlivening the few scenes he was given as Tom Hank’s lover in Philadelphia, and stealing Interview with the Vampire from Tom, Brad and Christian as the leader of the undead. Unlike most handsome desirable, in demand actors, he has never ducked nosy questions and effortlessly promotes understanding of diverse realities that many have difficulty accepting."

One of Outrage’s picks for most erotic moment in a gay film is featured in Law of Desire.

We can all learn from Antonio Banderas that understanding and accepting should come as naturally to us all as it does to him. It is easy to see why Pedro Almodóvar features Antonio in his films; his raw talent, ease of role playing and his deep passions inspire an understanding that allows each one of us to identify with the character no matter what our sexual preference.