In Which I Fall for Antonio Banderas. Again.

In 1991, I was making my way through the foreign section of my local video store, which was the closest thing I had to actual culture as a 17-year-old in a small exurban town, which is how I came to see a film called ¡Átame!, with the English title of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, by a filmmaker I'd then never heard of, Pedro Almodóvar.

This was before I had the ability to seriously critique the film, but after I was raped, and I had decidedly mixed and confused feelings toward a love story about a stalker who is released from a mental hospital and the drug-addled porn star he holds hostage. I came away from the film certain of quite possibly only one thing: My huge crush on Antonio Banderas.

It wasn't so much that I found him attractive, although I did, but that I found him deeply compelling. He interested me, and, when next I saw him two years later, in Philadelphia, he interested me still.

In the interceding years, I haven't seen everything he's been in (I'm sorry, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, but just no), though I've seen a lot of them. He's been in some great films and some real dogs—and frequently I find him the best thing about a film in either case. He hasn't lost his capacity to captivate me.

All this time, I've never learned much about him. I've seen his promotional spots for UNICEF and St. Jude's, which is cool, but I've never seen or read many interviews with him or articles about him. So I was interested when Shaker SapphireCate sent me the link to this interview with the note: "I don't know much about Banderas, but if this interview is any insight, he seems like a class act."

And so he does. I honestly can't recall the last time I read an A-list male actor say he was attracted to a project because it gave him the opportunity to work with a female director: "Plus, working with [director] Mimi Leder. She is someone I admire very much and it just reconfirmed that I love to work with women." I've maybe never read that at all.

It was also refreshing to see a male lead speak admiringly about his co-star, the wonderful Radha Mitchell, as a complicated person, rather than engaging in the typical faux-flattery of pretending an actress is perfect, which ultimately reduces her to a cardboard cutout.

And it's always nice to see someone say something like: "The last eight years of Bush were very hard. I don't want to get into a deep analysis of what everybody already knows, but the situation deteriorated our world."

But this is really great:

PW: Was [potentially being typecast as gay for playing gay roles early in your career] ever a big concern for you?

Antonio: I felt very early on in my professional life that where there were limits, there shouldn't have been limits. I remember in "Law of Desire," where I played a homosexual, that people were more upset that I kissed a man on the mouth than I killed a man. It's interesting to see how people can pardon you for murdering a man, but they can't pardon you for kissing one. It's a very interesting approach to morality in our days, so you see there is an incredible amount of hypocritical judgment over those things.

I almost can't imagine a more disparate response from the "menz are gross and prickly!" bullshit that is the typical response of any straight actor who kisses another man on film. It's interesting to see how people can pardon you for murdering a man, but they can't pardon you for kissing one. Well, that about sums it up, dunnit?