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he opening shots of PedroAlmodóvar’s lyrical, emotion-ally lush “Volver” feature aband of women, young andold, vigorously scrubbing down

Raimunda’s sister Soledad (a delightful LolaDueñas) suddenly gets a visit from theirmother (Carmen Maura). On the face of it,nothing shocking there, except that Momjust happens to have been dead for years.Such things are common in these parts,we’re told, as the departed often return totie up loose ends and smooth out old riftsand animosities. By fits and starts, we gatherthat this family has a tragic back story, andby the end, “Volver” becomes a quirkyhymn to reconciliation and acceptance.

Almodóvar has reached a point in hisdevelopment at which he canshake such baroquely plotted,psychologically dense moviesout of his sleeve with what lookslike astonishing ease. He’s ableto keep us off balance by radi-cally shifting tones without in-terrupting the organic flow ofthe narrative. One momentRaimunda is working out the details of agrisly criminal cover-up, the next she’scheerfully whipping an abandoned restau-rant into shape, a la Mildred Pierce. Withall its unexpected twists and turns, the storystill unfolds naturally, like some gaudyMediterranean flower.

With an alchemy that is perfectly distinc-tive, Almodóvar fashions a work of art outof raw material gleaned from soaps, tabloidtelevision and Hollywood’s golden age. Muchof the dialogue would be right at home inan over-the-top daytime drama (“After whathe had done, he had to move to Venezu-ela”) or a weepy novel (“It hurts when adaughter doesn’t love her mother”). But theselines are surrounded by so much inspiredidiosyncrasy and delivered with such con-viction that somehow their hackneyed char-acter melts away, until they glow with a genu-ine warmth and love difficult to resist.

Tthe tombs of their provincial town’s menfolk.Driven mad by the east winds of La Mancha(like Don Quixote, perhaps), the men dieyoung, one of the women offhandedlyexplains, as if describing an affliction vis-ited on her goats. Men, in fact, are almostentirely shooed off the screen in “Volver,”sometimes violently, the better to bring oneof the great Spanish director’s abiding themesto the fore: the endurance of women andthe bonds that unite them. “Volver” means“to come back,” and with this movie,Almodóvar is himself returning to the femi-nine world of such earlier works as “Womenon the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”(1988) and “All About My Mother” (1999).

The plot, as is often the case inAlmodóvar’s films, develops from a glori-ous tangle of improbable emergencies,greeted with a disarming unflappability.Raimunda (a radiant Penélope Cruz) isplunged into film noir territory when herno-account husband, taken to leering attheir teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo),precipitates a bloody crisis. Meanwhile,

Spanish filmmakerPedro Almodóvartakes another lovinglook at femaletroubles in “Volver.”by Thomas Peyser

Moreover, the film is graced with fine,splendidly modulated performances thatalone could have carried a much weakerpicture. It’s easy to see why many criticshave taken to comparing Cruz to SophiaLoren in her heyday. Her Raimunda, nowfiery, now vulnerable, and always fiercelyprotective of her daughter, is probably herrichest piece of work to date. Although Cruzis certainly the star, the movie is anchoredin some ways by the luminous performanceof Carmen Maura as the mother apparentlyreturned from the grave. And as a termi-

nally ill neighbor with a myste-rious link to the family (anotherflorid subplot), Blanca Portillohas enough edge to keep theproceedings from ever veeringinto the merely campy or senti-mental.

As always, Almodóvar lavishesappreciative attention on people

improvising their lives, often a little bit out-side the limits of the law, in order to pre-serve some measure of self-respect. Thismovie has a lot of respect for hardworkingprostitutes, neighborly pot smokers andunlicensed cosmetologists. But it also hon-ors the tradition-bound women of the prov-inces. When they march in a funeral pro-cession, silent except for the constant flut-tering of their black fans, the grave-tendersof La Mancha seem bearers of some ar-chaic, secret and saving knowledge.

And that’s what may ultimately be mostheartening in “Volver”: the idea that thereare all kinds of ways to carve out some-thing like a life for oneself and one’sfamily. While there’s certainly enoughsorrow in “Volver” to go around, there’salso a persuasive sense that sometimeswounds can heal, even if they leave ascar. (R) 121 min. ★★★★★

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Penelope Cruz andYohana Cobo playmother and daughterin this quirky tale ofreconciliation andacceptance thattakes place in LaMancha, Spain.

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lyparanoid rage at the slightest allusion to the fact that he once had a family. Although his condition is unknown to psychiatry, it is nicely tailored to the demands of movie-making, allowing for swift changes of tone when either gloom or puckishness threat-ens to pall.

But this movie isn’t merely about Char-lie’s problems. Alan, too, is grappling with a much vaguer form of discontent, the kind bred of too much perfection. He’s still living the life Charlie led before 9/11. His dental practice, centered on (what else?) veneers, is thriving. His wife (Jada Pinkett Smith), a Martha Stewart victim, divides her time be-tween advanced photography classes and cooking elegant dinners. And, Alan feels, she keeps him on a short leash.

For Alan, Charlie is not merely an object of pity and concern, but an escape from the old ball-and-chain. Emboldened by his ex-cursions into “Charlieworld,” he proclaims, “I’m not some damn Siamese twin! I’m me!” There’s a dose of liberating wisdom, writer and director Mike Bender would have us believe, in Charlie’s quasi-madness.

In the movie’s happiest moments, Char-lie and Alan play Huck and Jim, with a scooter for their raft, and the canyonlike avenues of New York for their Mississippi. Here they escape from all the people try-ing to pull them into the world of family and adult responsibility, most of whom are women, including a dotty young beauty (Saffron Burrows) who threatens to sue Alan for sexual harassment when he turns down her creepy come-on. Very much to the film’s detriment, this seemingly tangen-tial matter blossoms into a centerpiece of the final act.

Ultimately, both Charlie and Alan have to learn not to avoid their problems. This is ironic, given that the movie itself is unrepentantly guilty of avoidance to the last de-gree. Charlie finally runs afoul of the law, and in a way that, in our world,

would (thankfully) land him in jail or a psychiatric ward. Instead, he’s let go and told to show up days later at a commit-ment hearing. The denouement includes a judge (Donald Sutherland) who puts Charlie’s fate in the hands of his mourning

in-laws with the impartial words, “Ask yourself if your daughter would want Charlie locked up in a place like this,” and a therapist (Liv Tyler) who, just as appalling-ly, decides to play Cupid with her unstrung clients.

The shortcomings of the film cannot be laid at the door of the performers. Cheadle is, as al-ways, most interesting to watch.

Sandler, playing a fugitive from adulthood, is seldom compelled to shed his trademark persona, and thus does a passable job. The problem is the script’s childish understand-ing of pain. “Reign Over Me” doesn’t respect its subject, and it doesn’t trust its lead to do more than mumble, smirk and, from time to time, explode. (R) 124 min. HIIII S

Reign Over Me” begins with shots of Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) riding his motorized scooter all over New York at night, through streets wide and

narrow. Isolated, bedraggled and vulner-able, he seems to embody the wounded spirit of the city. Through a chance encoun-ter with an old friend, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), we learn that Charlie lost his family in one of the 9/11 hijackings. Strong meat for a major studio release, one might think, especially since Charlie goes from being a mentally ill total wreck to being a

Adam Sandler escapes from 9/11 into an imaginary reality of the Hollywood kind. by Thomas Peyser

Flight of Fancymentally ill demi-wreck — no quick fix for his problems in sight. But lest these hints of realism be taken as a sign that “Reign Over Me” is in any regard a serious work, let it be noted that it surrounds its weighty sub-ject with so much contrived nonsense that after a while the film feels like an affront to real suf-fering. Usually Hollywood indulges in flights from reality in order to make us feel good. But “Reign Over Me” is a rarity: an escapist downer.

When we meet Charlie, he has withdrawn from his sorrow into an upscale adolescence. He plays video games on a mammoth screen. He’s decorated his lux-ury Manhattan apartment with a life-size Colonel Sanders. He plays drums in a cov-er band. So completely has he erased his adult life that he does not even recognize Cheadle’s Alan, his college roommate and friend through dental school. Full of boyish charm, Charlie nevertheless explodes into

Adam Sandler’s trademark screaming rages continue to mark his emotional depth, and Billy Madison finally grows up, only to retreat back into a kid’s world, in “Reign Over Me.”

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When John Waters, the Rabelais of Balti-more, brought out “Hairspray” in 1988, it was a milestone in the mainstreaming of sleaze.

Focused on the backbiting world of a downscale, early-’60s “American Bandstand,” this cheery tale of a plus-sized teenager who twists her way to the top while bringing racial integration to the airwaves certainly wasn’t the assault on American sensibilities that Waters’ earlier “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and “Female Trouble” (1974) were. But “Hairspray” still managed to come off as a hymn to the louche, not least owing to the presence of Waters’ inimitable transvestite muse, Divine.

Now comes “Hairspray” the musical, via the hit Broad-way production, directed by choreographer Adam Shank-man. As one might expect, most of the remaining rough edges of Waters’ already toned-down vision have been scrubbed away. What remains is a mostly buoyant, candy-colored diversion, leavened by perky performances and upbeat numbers whose lyrics and melodies you’ll be hard-pressed to recall once you’ve left the theater.

The film opens with Tracy Turnblad (appealing 19-year-old newcomer Nikki Blonsky) showing us around her hum-

Shallow WatersJohn Waters’ 1988 “Hairspray” gets a makeover. by Thomas Peyser

gag shop and whose mother (an enormously padded John Travolta) is a laundress, Tracy dreams of joining the lanky kids on the local dance show, espe-cially heartthrob Link Larkin (Zac Efron). She finds her way blocked by smart cracks about her weight and by the villain of the piece, Velma Von Tussel (Mi-chelle Pfeiffer), who runs the operation as a showcase for her pretty, stuck-up daughter, Amber (Brittany Snow).

Sentenced to detention by unsympathetic teachers, Tra-cy is the only white girl in a room full of black students (it’s 1962), notably Seaweed J. Stubbs (Elijah Kelley). There she discovers a whole new repertoire of dance moves that make it to the small screen only on the dance show’s occasional “Negro Days,” presided over by a resplendent Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). When Seaweed and Tracy’s white friend Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes) fall for each other, the movie opens its final front against the close-mindedness that keeps the large and the dark off the airwaves, and the white and the black out of each other’s arms.

Much of the pre-release publicity has centered on Tra-volta, who floats through the movie like a Hindenburg in sequins. His performance, however, is more notable as a feat of engineering than of acting. Although appealing, it seldom rises above the level of an amusing stunt.

More than anything it’s the energy of the performers, rather than the script’s bite or cinematic craft, that keeps things moving along. In one of the best numbers, “I Can Hear the Bells,” Tracy imagines a romance with Link by exulting, “When we kiss in his car/Won’t go all the way,/But I’ll go pretty far.” That is a high point in the lyrics. Mostly the songs are just occasions for moon/June/spoon banalities.

Nowadays, filmmakers don’t get much practice at edit-ing musicals, and it shows. During the big dance numbers, there’s an affinity for close-ups of whoever’s singing, and a disinclination to allow any wide shots to last more than

ble Baltimore neighborhood. In a fleeting acknowledgment of the film’s edgier origins, she affectionately points out the local flasher, played, naturally, by Waters himself.

A big girl whose father (Christopher Walken) runs a

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In the remake of “Hairspray,” a padded John Travolta ups the estrogen in a ’60s-style muumuu with sequins, while daughter Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) looks about ready to break into song.

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three seconds. The result is a kinetic blur that might obscure some fine choreography. We’ll never know.

The only serious missteps in the film come late. The climactic dance competi-tion is delayed by the reigniting of Ma and Pa Turnblad’s marriage, the subject of a bland little song that slows things down.

Then, when Motormouth leads a civil rights march on the TV station, the cinema-tography goes all serious, and shots of an unbowed Queen Latifah fade portentously

“Hairspray” continued from page 38 to images of worn-down old men staring out of windows. That’s more weight than this bouffant of a movie can bear.

Real John Waters movies suggest a toler-ance grounded in the conviction that we’re all battered freaks, united in our kinkiness. In the new “Hairspray,” however, all that’s re-quested is that we become part of one big happy demographic. But then, when it re-leased “Pink Flamingos,” New Line was an independent studio. Now it’s a subsidiary of Time Warner. It’s a new millennium. (PG) 107 min. HHHII S