Ridiculous vastly over-rated National Enquirer-fed tragedy

Although this movie was well acted, the story is simply far too incredible to promote any sort of sympathy for the characters. Every character has a trait more common to outlandish soap operas than to dramatic films; a half-man, half-woman cross-dressing heroin-addicted AIDS-infested prostitute, an aging lesbian diva in love with a heroin-addicted actress young enough to be her granddaughter, a suffering wife of a completely addled husband with Alzeimer's estranged from her daughter, a tragic mother of a recently deceased 17-year old son, another half-man half-woman prostitute who spends the better part of the film speaking of his/her job-related exploits, and a preposterous nun who sleeps with the most unlikely of "men" to not only get pregnant but to also contract HIV. The cast of characters is just so ridiculous as to only be found in a very unrealistic episode of "Days of Our Lives".

It is obvious that Aldomovar was just going for the "Cannes Film Festival storyline", whose prize recipients always includes such improbable relationships and destructive character flaws. Why can't the story simply be about a woman trying to deal with the death of her son? No, that would not have won any accolades, so the entire cast of "very left of mainstream" characters had to be thrown in so that every reviewer in our Politically Correct times could not possibly pan it for fear of being labeled a bigot. How can the audience possibly accept that a nun presumably devoted enough to her order as to accept a dangerous humanitarian mission to war-torn El Salvador, would sleep with a known man/woman prostitute who has been a heroin addict for 15 years? What happened to her vows? What happened to her common sense? What in the world was the attraction????? The site of "Lola" at the nun's funeral near the end of the movie was more pathetic than tragic, no woman on the planet would possibly consider such a mate (nor would they even likely consider that person a man). It was simply so impossible to conceive that it was ridiculous.

Finely acted but preposterous tripe.

R.