Word: priestly
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...repurposing the cafeteria at the Loganville, Ga., middle school. First they carried in a dozen fake potted plants; then they replaced the lunch tables with a set of heavy risers. Next came an electric organ, boxes full of things like altar cloths and processional candles, and a rack bearing priestly vestments. By 9 o'clock the cafeteria was no longer a cafeteria; it was the sanctuary of the Holy Cross Anglican Church, where the priest, a magnetic 45-year-old named Foley Beach, led his flock in solemn yet joyous worship. "Church on wheels," quipped Harrison, a congregant. Indeed...
...spiritual leader, he was leaving not only them but also their denomination, the Episcopal Church U.S.A. Weeping, he explained that the church's attitude toward gays, which he termed its "immoral crisis," had led him to "the conclusion that I can no longer serve the Lord as an Episcopal priest." Instead, he would begin two new alliances: one with Frank Lyons, the conservative Anglican Bishop of Bolivia, enabling Beach to end-run the Episcopal American hierarchy in favor of its parent Anglicanism; and the other as pastor of a brand-new church--largely financed, it was later announced, by businessman...
...wear--a transvestite chanteuse, the wreck of an abused child, a caring brother, a furtive lover capable of murder. But that's no great stretch for Gael García Bernal. The budding Mexican star has convinced audiences he can be a dog-loving street punk (Amores Perros), a priest tortured by love (El Crimen del Padre Amaro), a randy teenager on a spree (Y Tu Mamá También). In The Motorcycle Diaries, which just opened, he incarnates the young Ernesto Guevara, soon to be Che. Bad Education follows in November, and after that, who knows? The kid from Guadalajara, Mexico...
...that boyish quality; even when he dresses up for a film premiere, he looks like a kid in Dad's duds. The child behind the man--that's a theme in Bad Education, in which the main character is a homosexual plotting revenge for his childhood abuse by a priest. The actor playing that character must juggle many identities, and Almodóvar saw that ability in García Bernal: "The script demanded someone who would be absolutely desirable both as a woman and as a man, who would be spontaneously virile and not be grotesque when the role was that...
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...