Cinema: Loving Pedro

The word for life in Spanish ought to be Almodovar. As in Pedro, the writer-director and all-round vital force in two decades of mostly terrific movies. He loves to tell stories, whether in his 13 features or across a restaurant table.

This enchanting chatterbox, with the round face and electrified hair of a Madrid muppet, makes you believe the oldest myth of cinema: that the magic is real, that movie people in person are as delightful, as bigger-than-life, as they are on the giant screen. Thus the truest compliment to pay his movies--those tangy, nourishing stews of bent men and brave women, of comedy and melodrama, passion and grief--is to say they are every bit as beguiling as he is. And the only thing to say about his new film, All About My Mother, is that it is even better: the most mature and satisfying work in a glittering, consistently surprising career. "Pedro is a great dancer," says Marisa Paredes, one of six superb actresses in Mother, "and this is his tango."

Hollywood likes his moves too. In a U.S. market where foreign-language films are hard to find even in art houses, Almodovar, 48, is a reliable moneymaker. He also makes the kind of bright, saucy films Hollywood wishes it could. So the studios have courted him ever since his 1988 hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. They bought remake rights for Jane Fonda, then for Whoopi Goldberg (though the film wasn't made), then they asked him to direct Sister Act, First Wives Club, Runaway Bride and, he says, "anything with drag queens." But though he hopes to make a film soon in Florida, based on Pete Dexter's novel The Paperboy, Almodovar's roots are deep in the Iberian psyche. He has never filmed outside Spain. Indeed, he hadn't shot outside Madrid until he made All About My Mother, set mostly in Barcelona.

The trip was a tonic for him; this film, for all its verbal and emotional buoyancy, touches a depth his earlier work danced around, like revelers on a volcano's edge. Mother begins by painting an idyll: of Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse who works in her hospital's organ-transplant unit, and her darling son Esteban (Eloy Azorin). Manuela is the mom every gay, or simply sensitive, son would adore. She watches All About Eve with him, gives him a Truman Capote book for his birthday, takes him to a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. He is a sweet, giving lad with a lot of promise. Almodovar is careful and caring in setting up this lovely couple--one could build a fine movie around them--and then he is ruthless in tearing them apart. With Esteban gone, Manuela has a mission: to grieve heroically and heal the wounds of other desperate souls. She is the ultimate organ donor. Now that her heart has been broken, she gives pieces of it to everyone.