by MATTHEW HAYS

Though a bunch prone to hyperbolic inanities, film critics are just in praising Spanish renegade auteur Pedro Almodóvar's latest movie to the hilt. It's a film that prompts the question: can Almodóvar do no wrong?

Bad Education is one of Almodóvar's most personal works. In a gentle bit of self-consciousness (we're constantly subtly reminded that we're watching a movie), Almodóvar has an onscreen doppelgänger, Enrique Goded (played by Fele Martínez), a filmmaker, approached by a childhood friend from his distant past (the surreally beautiful Gael García Bernal). The two, we learn, had a close friendship as children that was tainted by the Catholic school they attended, where abusive priests lorded over the wee ones. Bernal's character has imagined a possible past for the two, who are now adults. Enrique decides this engaging short story will form the basis of his next movie. Almodóvar then cuts between different narratives - some imagined, some real - concocting a mystery movie of Hitchcock proportions. Don't expect any more plot twists: I will not risk ruining this film for anyone.

There are too many striking elements to list here, but perhaps what is most incredible about Almodóvar is the way he continues to surprise us, while making it all seem so effortless. It's impossible to know where he will take his characters (and us) next, it's just sheer pleasure to go along for the ride. It helps that he has such a willing and able cast; led by Martínez and Bernal, they clearly recognize the brilliance of the material they've been handed and are rightly thankful for it, rising to its complex set of challenges.

Almodóvar is one wildly referential director, riding pop culture throughout this Bad Education. The opening credits are full of Hitchcockian bravado (in particular Psycho), and watching a small child break into Breakfast at Tiffany's' "Moon River" in Spanish is, and shall remain, one of the filmmaker's greatest moments. We laugh with recognition while feeling the boy's pain at being trapped in the clutches of an abusive priest. Almodóvar is a director who can make us feel like laughing while setting off pangs of tragedy and sorrow at the same time.

You've got to admire Almodóvar, not just for his filmmaking finesse, but because he's managed to do it all on his own terms. He's been offered scads of money by Hollywood to helm screwball comedies in Tinseltown, and has offered them the bird back. He remains a Spanish-language filmmaker, brazenly queer, funny, feisty and downright strange. And Bad Education, as a movie that reminds us about the dangers of covering up past truths no matter how horrid, has the ghost of Franco hanging over it, the dictator who smothered Spain for decades.

Look for Almodóvar at the Oscars this February. No doubt Bad Education will get him there again, and he'll be able to remind Americans that subtle filmmaking still exists somewhere in the world, while admonishing them for that entirely unnecessary war their government began. Bravo. n

Bad Education opens at Cinéma du Parc, Friday, Jan. 14

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