Few Americans had heard of Pedro Almodóvar when Michael Lumpkin stunned Frameline’s 1987 audiences with a triple bill of the young director’s works: What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Labyrinth of Passion, and the film some consider Almodóvar’s first masterpiece, Law of Desire. Each is a marvelous film, but it’s easy to see why Desire won that year’s audience prize for best feature and went on to be the director’s first big hit. It bursts onto the screen with a colorful and humane sexual anarchy that is unprecedented in the history of film, then keeps its audience on the edge of its seats from laughter with a roller-coaster story that is part fantasy, part murder mystery and part erotic comedy.

The film stars an incredibly luscious Antonio Banderas as Antonio, who loves Pablo, and the handsome Eusebio Poncela as Pablo, who loves Juan (Miguel Molina). It also features Carmen Maura, who nearly steals the movie in a breakthrough performance as Pablo’s sister Tina, who used to be his brother. Banderas and the boys will have you swooning, but it’s Maura who sets the screen on fire as a self-made woman so hot they have to hose her down in a public square to cool her off. That 1987 screening of Law of Desire turned Almodóvar into a household name in San Francisco. Don’t miss this chance to relive that moment of discovery and see this great film on the Castro screen, where it belongs.