MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Heaven’ Shines With Divine Entertainment

As surprise becomes an almost lost quality in films, the sly wit, the intelligence and the joyous unpredictability of “Half of Heaven” shine like a good deed in an increasingly bankrupt moviegoing world. (It’s at AMC Century 14, Century City.)

Director Manuel Gutierrez Aragon’s story is a lusty appreciation of the power, beauty, tenacity and mysteries of women; it was the Spanish foreign-film entry in last year’s Academy Awards. Aragon and Luis Megino, his producer and co-writer, take their story--loosely--from the lives of several well-known figures from Franco’s time and their title from a phrase of Confucius, lifted later by Mao Tse-tung: “Women are half of heaven.” (Prudence kept either gentleman from a roll call of the other half.)

On the surface, it seems to be a familiar story of a bright and beautiful young woman who rises from poverty to power in the highest circles of postwar Madrid. Since it stars the hypnotically lovely and intelligent Angela Molina (Luis Bunuel’s utterly un obscure object of desire), the film is entirely creditable on that level.

You can also think of it, however, as a fairy tale grounded in the earth of the Spanish countryside. It has quarrelsome, shiftless sisters; a magical and oft-repeated request used to tell a base heart from a true one; scurrying rats; faithful courtiers, and an almost magical grandmother (played with exceptional warmth and savor by the splendid Margarita Lozano).

But just as you think you have the film comfortably pigeonholed, it breaks free of expectation to be smart, funny, tender, nourishing and mystical.

The story spans roughly 15 years, from 1959 when Rosa is a schoolgirl in a remote Spanish village. (Molina’s younger sister, Monica, plays Rosa at that age.) She is the favorite of her irascible father, but it’s hardly any contest since her two sisters have broken almost everything of any consequence in their tiny cottage and spilled the rest. Rosa’s own favorite is her cheroot-smoking, loving grandmother (Lozano), whose full powers unfold for us slowly. Certainly, grandmother keeps a careful eye on the future--her asides about things about to unfold have an uncanny way of coming true.

She has absolutely foretold the events that bring Rosa and her infant daughter, Olvido, to Madrid. There Rosa is hired as wet-nurse to the baby of the elegant, semi-alcoholic Don Pedro (Fernando Fernan-Gomez), high in the Franco bureaucracy and a recent widower. (You can’t improve on the press notes, which call Don Pedro “a towering ruin waiting for the wrecking ball,” nor on Fernan-Gomez’s bibulous, yearning portrayal.)

But if you think you can predict behind-the-stairs hanky-panky and a subsequent rise to power by our Rosa, you’ve been spending too much time with nighttime soaps. Her rise is stubborn, shrewd, surprising, the result of pure hard work and her irresistible rice pudding.

Two younger men cross Rosa’s path at the public markets where she begins: Delgado (Nacho Martinez), a cool, rising public official, and Juan (Antonio V. Valero), an impetuous student. Then there is the enchanting, middle-aged Ramiro (Francisco Merino), a man of equal parts poetry and pragmatism, who knows more about the real workings of the world than any second banana since Sancho Panza.

Yet in the story’s dizzying shifts and astonishments, it is the institution of family that prevails. Little Olvido--named for her grandmother and, as it turns out, an inheritor of more than her name--grows to be a copper-haired beauty of 11 and a major force in the film with Rosa’s sisters, her ax-wielding papa, and her majestic grandmother.

Aragon is in no rush to spread his story before us, and he keeps his change-ups absolutely seamless. At first, with hissing streams of warm milk, frothing urine and tumbling mountain rivulets, it seems that we’re headed for a “Tree of the Wooden Clogs” union with nature. Then we move into Bunuel-like wit and irony among Madrid society, and finally to an almost mystical conclusion. But Aragon’s unsentimental and darkly beautiful style, which affects every element from the camera work to the editing and the music, gives the film an extraordinary cohesiveness.

Most refreshing of all is the film makers’ deeply held premise that those powers sometimes called feminine/mystical/intuitive are as necessary to the balance of life as the streams with which the film begins. Spanish cinema has been a nurturing place for such iconoclasm for years with Carlos Saura’s “Cria,” Victor Erice’s “Spirit of the Beehive,” Jose Luis Borau’s “La Sabina” and now, most radiantly with “Half of Heaven.” What an extraordinary gift.

“HALF OF HEAVEN”

A Skouras Pictures release of a film produced with the subsidization of the Spanish Ministry of Culture in collaboration with Television Espanola SA. Producer Luis Megino. Director Manuel Gutierrez Aragon. Original screenplay Aragon, Megino. Music Milladoiro. Camera Jose Luis Alcaine. Set decoration, costumes Gerardo Vera. Editor Jose Salcedo. Sound D. Goldstein, R. Steinberg. With Angela Molina, Margarita Lozano, Fernando Fernan-Gomez, Antonio V. Valero, Nacho Martinez, Santiago Ramos, Francisco Merino, Monica Molina, Raul Fraire, Concha Hidalgo.

Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.