Law of Desire, one of three inaugural titles in Arsenal's film book series Queer Film Classics, focuses on the 1987 homoerotic melodrama by Pedro Almodovar, 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 thirty-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, Almodovar 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, Almodovar 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 Almodovar created Law of Desire, as well as its impact on LGBT cinema both in Europe and around the world.

Jose Quiroga (1959-2024) was a Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Emory University in Atlanta. He wrote extensively on Latin American and Latino popular culture, media, literature, and queer studies. He was also a visiting professor at Columbia, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland.

Jose Quiroga's profile page

Thomas Waugh is the award-winning author or co-author of numerous books, including five for Arsenal Pulp Press: Out/Lines, Lust Unearthed, Montreal Main: A Queer Film Classic (with Jason Garrison), Comin' At Ya! (with David L. Chapman) and Gay Art: A Historic Collection (with Felix Lance Falkon). His other books include Hard to Imagine, The Fruit Machine, and The Romance of Transgression. He teaches film studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where he lives. He has published widely on political discourses and sexual representation in film and video, on lesbian and gay film and video, and has more recently undertaken interdisciplinary research and teaching on AIDS. He is also the founder and former coordinator of the Minor Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality at Concordia.

In addition to the titles below, Thomas is also co-editor (with Matthew Hays) of the Queer Film Classics series.

Thomas Waugh's profile page

Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based critic, author, film festival programmer, and university instructor. He is the co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of Arsenal Pulp's Queer Film Classics series. He has been a film critic and reporter for the weekly Montreal Mirror since 1993. His first book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press), was cited by Quill & Quire as one of the best books of 2007 and won a 2008 Lambda Literary Award. His articles have appeared in a broad range of publications, including The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Vice, The Walrus, The Advocate, The Toronto Star, The International Herald Tribune, Cineaste, Cineaction, Quill & Quire, This Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Canadian Screenwriter, and Xtra!. He teaches courses in journalism, communication studies and film studies at Concordia University, where he received his MA in communication studies in 2000. A two-time nominee for a National Magazine Award, Hays received the 2013 Concordia President's Award for Teaching Excellence. .
Matthew is also co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of the Queer Film Classics series.

Matthew Hays' profile page

[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

Quiroga brilliantly contextualizes the significance of the film's individual scenes as well as its idiosyncratic themes and motifs, while linking all to Almodóvar's oeuvre generally, treating the 1987 film as a particularly pivotal text in not only Almodóvar's career but also in post-Franco Spanish culture.
-Cineaste

Cineaste

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

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