Pedro Almodovar has been making ‘peculiars’ for nearly thirty years and in many ways Bad Education, his latest, is like a greatest hits package. Live Flesh was a divergence from the kinky, colourful extravaganzas of his ‘early’ period and the sombre melodramas of his later work. It was inevitable that the two styles would reconverge and the result is a deeply personal, largely autobiographical film that brings together all that is great and grand about Almodovar, starting with transvestites. As boys, Iganacio and Enrique discover love and fear at a Spanish religious school governed by the domineering Father Manolo. As young men in the 1980’s, one has become a film director, the other an entertainer. Tragedy strikes, revenge is sought and a provocative noir tale of sex and Catholicism ensues. Bad Education is certainly a ripe fruit, one that may lack the defining precision of Talk To Her or All About My Mother. That said, it’s a great deal more fun, a joyous romp through vengeance, murder and betrayal marked by another blistering performance from Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries). It’s also marked by graphic sex and an intricate plot whose deceptions and u-turns are compounded by a character who deliberately fudges the truth. Reality is so deeply blurred that it takes some time to register the tragic measure of the final heartbreak. Yet it’s also warmed by a compassion extended to all characters, even the lustful, manipulative priest, bringing depth in revealing the agony of life under Spain’s repressive regime for those who couldn’t conform: gay, straight or Catholic. Bad Education is a delirious, dazzling experience that seduces like an overflowing jug of sangria. // COLIN FRASER