Chicks-with-dicks, histrionic actresses, nuns in the family way: pretty much business as usual, chez Almódovar. But remember, this is new Almódovar, the director who reinvented himself after the crude, clumsy Kika with the surprisingly warm Flower of My Secret and startling Ruth Rendell adaptation Live Flesh. No surprise then that the award-winning All About My Mother - a typically Almódovarian take on that old Bette Davis warhorse All About Eve - is exquisite.

The first time shooting outside of his beloved Madrid finally sees Almódovar striking a détente between his familiar exaggerated style of old and this new found humanity. As a consequence the film is still designed to within an inch of its life - Manuela's apartment is all grisly Bless This House wallpaper and soft furnishings - and peopled with a string of explosively colourful characters, but now when it reaches for the heartstrings, its writer-director pulls no punches.

Performances are spot-on, particularly the heartbroken Roth and brittle Paredes, and Albeto Iglesias' score is just wonderful. But in the end it's Almódovar's film - and one tempered with a real understanding, genuine compassion and an instinctive skill for storytelling. His best work - think Live Flesh - is complex in design and lyrical in execution, and All About My Mother is no exception. It's a film about women principally, with few male characters and a marked absence of father figures. And unusually for Almódovar, a complete lack of sex. It's only afterwards that you recognise it for what it is: both Almódovar's Queerest film in years - those hookers, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis - and, paradoxically, his most universally appealing.