Movies: MEET THE NEW IT BOY

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Almodóvar's tactic, as always, is to put extraordinary creatures in extreme situations while lavishing sympathy on every character, including the evil ones. The actor who'll do anything for a role; the director, an expert at manipulating people; even the priest, who is often as pathetic as he is predatory--all express the film's thesis that love can be a form of abuse and, occasionally, vice versa. Weaving sad headlines about the pedophile clergy into a plot that suggests James M. Cain as filmed by Hitchcock, the film dexterously dances across four time periods and leaves the viewer to determine whether any one scene is reality, memory, fantasy or movies. One thing, however, is certain: nobody makes movies with the brio and gravity of Almodóvar's. Bad Education is a cooler film than the director's two recent masterpieces, All About My Mother and Talk to Her, but it's one magnificent melodrama.

Director and star tussled over the approach to the film's "heroine." As García Bernal says, "My inner transvestite is much more Caribbean, and I wouldn't have thought of doing some of the expressions I do in the movie, which are much more Spanish." But whatever the on-the-set spats, the results are spectacular. Whether sporting a macho beard or a cascading blond wig, García Bernal makes his character sexy, annoying ... fully human. Almodóvar sees that cocktail of emotions in the actor: "What I like about Gael is that mixture of innocence and passion, tight secrecy and tenderness, sensuality and unconsciousness."

Now he can spread that complicated charisma on a bigger stage--if he wants. "I'm pretty open to work anywhere in the world," he says, "including the United States, of course." He recently made an indie drama, The King, set in Texas, in which he plays William Hurt's son. He is reputed to have turned down some big Hollywood roles, though he won't reveal which ones, "because that's not professional to say." But he is ready for his American close-up and at ease with his impending eminence. "Some things you can control, like the performance you give. But stardom is just a consequence. It's not important, but I am able to enjoy it,"

Whether he enjoys it or not, it looks inevitable for the young man who can do anything. --Reported by Desa Philadelphia/Toronto