is, on the level of a conception, Almodóvar commented. The homosexual subject matter in Law of Desire made it more difficult to find funding for its production. Initially, the brothers could not get support from the ministry of culture. It was thanks to the personal intervention of Fernando Méndez Leite, the government representative for film production, that the ministry of culture gave 40 million pesetas to make the film and Lauren films contributed with 20 million and the rest from other sources. The film was a most modest production, with a total budget of 100 million pesetas, less than Almodóvar's previous film. Commenting on Law of Desire Almodóvar stated that his intention was to make a film about desire and passion: "What interested me most is passion for its own sake. It is a force you cannot control, which is stronger than you and which is as much a source of pain as of pleasure. In any case, it is so strong that it makes you do things which are truly monstrous or absolutely extraordinary". Reception Law of Desire, Almodóvar's sixth film, premiered in Madrid on 7 February 1987. It was the most commercially successful Spanish film at the local box office in 1987, and it was the Spanish film of that year most widely distributed abroad surpassing Mario Camus's The House of Bernarda Alba. Law of Desire toured many festival circuits. It won the award for best director at the Rio de Janeiro film festival; best new director at Los Angeles; the Teddy Award (1987) at the Berlin International Film Festival and Best Film at the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian film festival. In Spain it won Fotogramas de Plata as Best Film and the National award for cinematography for Carmen Maura for her performance as Tina; other awards for the film came from Italy and Belgium. It took time for Spanish film critics to warm up to Almodóvar's work. His earlier films were recognized for the irreverence of their humor and social parody but were generally deemed as frivolous. Law of Desire was better received than its predecessor. Ernesto Pardo writing for Segre wrote: I have never been keen on Almodóvar ... I find him too over the top, excessive, unreal... As if he lived in another world... on the other hand [with Law of Desire, Almodóvar] has achieved what at the outset seemed impossible. That is,