Pedro Almodóvar's been a bad boy over the last few days. First, he allegedly didn't turn up at the polling station where he'd been assigned to work on election day last Sunday (a legal obligation if you're called). Secondly, he suggested that at midnight last Saturday night, the Partido Popular was on the point of provoking a coup d'état (he has since apologized, claiming he was merely reporting a rumour). And thirdly, he has released his new film, La mala educación (Bad Education), whose release was greeted by a protests at his political opinions. BE supposedly deals with sexual abuse by Catholic priests, but is really just a very cleverly put-together piece of film noir. The abuse theme, which is the one getting all the tongues wagging, is touched on only fairly briefly, in fact, and never in the enquiring, emotionally gruelling way the theme actually deserves, as displayed in The Magdalene Sisters, for example. Don't get me wrong - I did like it, a lot. There's always something I like about an Almodovar film, as I hope my Variety review shows. But I'm getting increasingly weary of his visually beautiful treatments of morally unbeautiful things. Here are a few clips from the review, if you're interested. (I can't link to it, because it's a pay site.) Apologies for the rather odd Variety house style: "meller" means melodrama, "pic" means the film. And I won't give any of the plot away and spoil it (El Deseo, his production company, have been frantically asking journalists to give as little of the plot away as possible):

"Pedro Almodovar's long-gestated, instantly identifiable "Bad Education" welds autobiographical matter relating to his troubled religious education onto a classic noir structure, repping a generic shift from the classy, emotionally involving mellers that have dominated his recent output. Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive pic has the potential to extend Almodovar's offshore appeal beyond its already broad arthouse-to-crossover base. Pic has already presold to several major territories, including the U.S. (where Sony Classics plans a fall release [and is released in the UK at the end of May]). Following its Spanish bow March 19, pic opens the Cannes Film Festival in May... Almodovar aficionados will be reassured that most of his later stylistic hallmarks are present and correct: abundant pop-culture refs in the form of cheesy Italian pop songs, nods to classic movies (including "Double Indemnity" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's") and film posters; a brief trip to a pueblo, which contrasts with the slick urban setting of the rest of pic; games with identity and fiction vs. reality; and, as ever, truckloads of transvestites... In terms of plotting, "Education" is Almodovar's most ambitious project to date... The price the pic pays for the pleasing complexity of its plot is a lack of room for maneuvering characterization. One of the joys of Almodovar's movies has always been their offbeat, throwaway lines, or oblique, ironic glances; here, there are precious few of either. Humor, likewise, is scarce... the visual assault of dense, creamily rich colors and super-crisp light and shadow, always framed to perfection, feels at odds with the priests' squalid morality. A lengthy swimming pool sequence is erotic but emotionally barren, with an emphasis on beauty per se -- dripping buttocks, slo-mo bodies under water -- that's closer to pop videos... The shift away from melodrama leads to a loss of the emotional undertow visible in recent Almodovar pics like "Talk to Her" and "All About My Mother," with their grief-stricken, profoundly sympathetic protagonists. It's ironic that the most affecting moments are for the hateful but weak Father Manolo, as he struggles to control his inner conflict. Other characters are largely a gallery of self-seeking types..."

And so on. (Possibly another PdS Blog scoop, by the way - this is surely the first blogged English language review of the year's biggest Spanish film. A major moment in the history of journalism.) My favourite sentence of the review was actually edited out, as quite often happens: "Almodovar’s special gift, again evidenced here, is for creating worlds in which terrible things happen, but where you’d want to live anyway." Neither, by the way, am I responsible for the idea that an "emotional undertow" can be "visible". Everyone else will probably call BE a masterpiece - many people, especially abroad, where his reputation stands higher than it does at home - believed Talk to her was one. I don't think he's quite made a masterpiece yet. Maybe, God forbid, I'm slowly turning into a Spanish critic.
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