Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
1989 film by Pedro Almodóvar
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Spanish: ¡Átame!, pronounced [ˈa.ta.me], "Tie Me Up!") is a 1989 Spanish black romantic comedy film co-written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Victoria Abril and Antonio Banderas alongside Loles León, Francisco Rabal, Julieta Serrano, María Barranco, and Rossy de Palma. The plot follows a recently released psychiatric patient who kidnaps an actress in order to make her fall in love with him. He believes his destiny is to marry her and father her children.
The film was highly successful with both critics and audiences in Spain. Its United States release was entangled in controversy, instrumental in the implementation by the MPAA of a new rating category, NC-17, for films of an explicit nature that were previously categorized as pornographic due to the X rating.
Plot
Ricky, a 23-year-old psychiatric patient, has been deemed cured and is released from a psych hospital. Until then, he has been the lover of the hospital's female director. An orphan, free, and alone, his goal is to have a normal life with actress Marina Osorio, a former porn star and recovering drug addict, with whom he once slept during an escape from the asylum.
“Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” enters the record as 1989 film by Pedro Almodóvar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Down, film and Pedro can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Down, film and Pedro provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q600176. VIAF identifies the subject as 219203389. 24 of 24 selected statements include explicit references; 22 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! primary sources, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! archive and Down research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.