Cinema: Motherhood Is a Drag

By RICHARD CORLISS

Becky, the mom (Marisa Paredes) in HIGH HEELS, is a star of the Hispanic stage and screen. Rebecca, the daughter (Victoria Abril), is a sulky Cinderella who has always felt herself the ignored victim of celebrity. As a child, she took the slights hard, switching uppers for downers in her stepfather's medicine bottles, just prior to his demise. Now in her late 20s, Rebecca is still mom- crazy: she's married to one of her mother's old lovers and is having a fling with a drag queen who impersonates Becky. When Becky returns to Spain after years in Mexico, the lover-husband dies too. Welcome back to the loopy world of Pedro Almodovar. In this deadpan update of the old Lana Turner weepie Portrait in Black, the writer-director of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! tosses his usual salad of mad love, acrobatic sex and cross-dressing, and garnishes it with a chorus line in a women's prison. High Heels careers like a runaway circus train over the rickety trestle of melodrama. Between giggles at the absurdity of it all, you're welcome to shudder. R.C.