"We must clarify that what is conceived as normality hides, no doubt, what is more perverse."
PEDRO ALMODÓVAR
Far beyond the nutritive source of desire, Pedro Almodóvar found on disintegration of family values a significant engine for the plot of his films. Like ¡Átame!, where the story of Ricky and Marina begins with an extravagant inversion of family virtues to become a sacred drama.
In the idyllic opening of ¡Átame!, accompanying the opening credits, we see the emergence of a painting displaying the classic images of the Sacred Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The story that comes next, at first, may look like a provocation to the values associated with these sacred icons. Marina, a woman tied to a bed by Ricki, is a former porn star and heroin addict. Ricki is a man who recently left a psychiatric clinic, without property or family, whose only purpose is to demonstrate his capacity to love and become a partner of Marina, the woman who, in the past, perfectly matched him sexually. He ties her on her bed to prevent a escape and to force her to adapt herself to him. Their first meeting is remembered by Ricki, but Marina does not recall many aspects of the recent past, being constantly under the influence of drugs.
The plot may, erroneously, at first glance, be interpreted as a story of sadism, but gently transformed in the achievement of Ricki's wishes. The mutual violence between these two characters evolves into the most trivial sense of harmony between a man and a woman. Both have moved into the moody atmosphere of marriage as sharing the bathroom in the mornings or arrange silent dinners in front of the TV. Love arises when Ricki, involved in a fight, returns to the house where Marina is waiting, all tied in the bed. Seeing the wounded man, she's compelled to help him immediately. In that moment, while she's cleaning his wounds, Ricki tells her about the only tangible memory he still keep of his parents. Ricki finally awake the compassion of Marina. Thrilled, she kiss the wounds of the man who forced her to know love, in an attempt to alleviate the suffering of pain and memories. They have sex and Marina finally remembers when they met in the past. It is the aura of piety in wich she accepts Ricki and his tenuous devotion to the woman who finally understood him, that makes complete the cycle of violence and passion, pain and solace, which brings us back to the images of the film opening and understand that above the love of a woman, Marina accepts him with the love of a mother.
