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...young actor playing the young actor in Pedro Almodóvar's new film also has a myriad of faces to 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...
...helped make Latin movies the hot dish in world cinema. From Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, filmmakers have created works of whirling vigor, social conscience and a visual style just this side of surreal. And in these films audiences see compelling actors. Often in Almodóvar films--Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem got early spotlights in them...
...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 of a transvestite. From the first tests, Gael...
...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...
...GAEL GARCIA BERNAL IN THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES AND BAD EDUCATION This hunky, soulful Mexican could be his own toughest competitor. We'd pick his virtuoso turn in Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education over his more conventional role as the young Che Guevara...