Actor Angel Andrade (Gael Garcia Bernal) is the source of the mystery in Bad Education, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar's homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and his most mainstream film in years.

One of the greatest gifts in world cinema, somebody worth celebrating, is prolific Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar. A new Almodovar film comes out about every year. More impressive is the fact that each new film is richer, more emotional and more lasting than the last -- all impressive additions to his substantial body of work.

Bad Education (La Mala Educacion), Almodovar's 15th film, is a mainstream thriller, perhaps his most commercial film yet. The colorful twist -- the trademark Almodovar kink that makes the film as fresh and artful as it is suspenseful -- is that all its main characters are either gay or bisexual.

Two childhood friends who first met in 1960 at a Catholic boarding school in Madrid, Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez), now a successful gay filmmaker and Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael Garcia Bernal), a fringe actor with big-screen dreams who goes by the name Angel Andrade, reunite after many years apart in 1980. At least that's Ignacio's ruse.

The mysteries build as Goded (Fele Martinez) agrees that his next movie will be Ignacio's story, "The Visit," a tale based on their experiences with the school's abusive priest Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez-Cacho).

Almodóvar spins the tale with numerous flashbacks, jumps to various Spanish locations, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Galicia, as well as movie-within-a-movie footage. The drama unfolds like a memory play, something new for Almodóvar. By the time he has revealed all the secrets, lies and surprises behind Ignacio's mystery, he has created a film about the passion for an artistic life, especially the movies.

As Angel, Bernal makes full use of his muscular body, bedroom eyes and nervous smile. Bernal is charismatic -- that's something we learned from his lead performances as the young Che Guevara in director Walter Salles' epic The Motorcycle Diaries and the sexy road movie, Y Tu Mamá También -- but Almodóvar captures Bernal's evocative side. The director expects a lot from Bernal as the source of the film's mystery, the reason why we stay hooked to the end, and Bernal does not let him (or us) down.

Fele Martinez is a newcomer to U.S. moviegoers, not half as handsome as Bernal. But his affable performance as Goded, the Jimmy Stewart role in any good Alfred Hitchcock thriller, complements Bernal perfectly. They act like would-be lovers, infatuated with but not trusting each other.

Almodóvar arrived in Madrid in the early 1970s, working in just about every arts medium -- comic books, theater and experimental movies. He became Spanish cinema's enfant terrible in the era of artistic freedom after Franco's death in 1975.

The NC-17 rating (the same rating given to Bad Education due to its sexual content) was created after Miramax Films protested the X-rating the MPAA was going to give Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! If Almodóvar used to show off extreme imagery in his films just for the fun of it, he has clearly grown as a storyteller.

Almodóvar continues to flaunt his love for classic American movies. His 1999 drama All About My Mother is a clear homage to All About Eve (in which a distraught mother seeks out the father of her recently dead teenage son). Almodóvar makes Bad Education his version of Hitchcock's Vertigo, with switched identities playing a key role in the story.

Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias provides the score; a series of thumping musical passages modeled after Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score. The music is a perfect match for the film's Saul Bass-like credits sequence, lush visuals and suspensful tale.

While it is more than suggested that Father Manolo abused the boys at the school, Almodóvar makes him sympathetic and tragic, not the clichéd villain. This subtlety, what some might call maturity, makes Bad Education every bit as good and, perhaps, more assured than his recent films, Talk to Her All and About My Mother.

Almodóvar might be the name that represents Spanish cinema to moviegoers around the world, but Spanish actor Javier Bardem is the face they recognize. Bardem came to be known as a strapping symbol of Spanish machismo in Almodóvar's Live Flesh and the Bigas Luna comedy, Jamón, Jamón. Like Almodóvar, Bardem has grown as a film artist, complementing his swagger and sexuality with emotion, intelligence and depth. With his latest film, the emotionally rich melodrama The Sea Inside, Bardem teams with Spanish cinema's other great ambassador, filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.

Amenábar loves movies as much as Almodóvar and The Sea Inside continues his victory march through classic movie genres with zest and daring. The Others (2001), Amenábar's best known film, is a creepy, fun, gothic ghost story with Nicole Kidman's frantic mother protecting her children from bumps in the night. Open Your Eyes (1997) was inspired science fiction, a dizzy drama about a disfigured man adrift in a virtual reality dream world. Thesis (1996), Amenábar's debut, was razor-sharp, a dark horror tale about a film student whose life takes a dangerous turn after she discovers a snuff film.

Amenábar exchanges scares for tears with The Sea Inside, the story of Ramón Sampedro (Bardem), a paralyzed Spanish man who fought government authorities for 30 years for the right to end his life. Bardem's bearish body is mostly confined to bed, which allows him to test the emotional limits of his facial expressions, husky voice and deep-set eyes. His body might be still throughout The Sea Inside, but his spirit is alive, creating a performance high above the common cliché of the handicapped hero.

Belén Rueda, playing a lawyer who aids Sampedro, someone with her own physical ailments, and Lola Dueñas, as a local woman who falls in love with Sampedro, surround Bardem with strong supporting performances.

The Sea Inside is character-driven in the best way and much of the film's emotions as well as its pro-euthanasia political message belong to Bardem, who brings a lifetime's worth of feelings to his heavy-lidded eyes.

Yet, it's Amenábar who's clearly in charge of the tears. He makes every melodramatic moment count in the film, boosting the emotion with sweeping camerawork (courtesy of Javier Aguirresarobe) when Ramón dreams he's flying, his own lush score and a knack for knowing how to touch people's hearts.

Bardem, last seen as an unemployed shipyard worker in Mondays in the Sun (Los Lunes al Sol) and as a South American police detective in charge of finding a mysterious revolutionary in The Dancer Upstairs (John Malkovich's directorial debut), is subtle in The Sea Inside, which has not always been the case. His bearish body, his trademark, is kept under wraps, pushing the film's human elements to the forefront.

Change can be a good thing. Almodóvar once wrapped his stories in farce and physical comedy. But lately, his films have grown more complex. What we love and admire about past Almodóvar films -- Kika, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Live Flesh -- remains true in Bad Education: glossy photography, adult sexiness, heartfelt kinkiness, colorful characters, rich colors, cool fashion and cinematic style.

His films have always been fun and flashy. Recently, more than ever with Bad Education, his films are more substantial, lasting, authentic classics in their own right. Bad Education grade: A; The Sea Inside grade: A