Nobody feels as comfortable portraying sexuality on screen as Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. But the man who played rape for laughs in Kika and chuckled at black-widow lovemaking in Matador mellows his trademark style with Live Flesh (Carne Trémula). Though the title of his newest film suggests new heights of filmic eroticism, Almodóvar actually tones down his penchant for mixing black comedy, satire and sexuality this time around.

While sexual tension is still Almodóvar's major focus, both the camerawork and scripting in Live Flesh are tamer than in the past. The film is based on a novel by Ruth Rendell, which means Almodóvar sacrificed the freedom of complete control he has when working with an original story. But this new film shows that Almodóvar isn't as eager to shock his audiences as before. Although the style may be more discreet, Live Flesh is clearly Almodóvar's work. His films generally open with a bang, and Live Flesh is no exception.

In the film's first scene, a shrieking woman draws the camera from the deserted streets of 1970 Madrid into a brothel, where the madam discovers that one of her young prostitutes (Penélope Cruz) is in labor. With no time to lose, the frantic madam commands an off-duty bus driver to take them to a hospital. Unable to wait, the mother delivers the baby en route. The unlikely story attracts attention from the media and the bus company, who gives baby Victor a lifetime bus pass.

The opening scene serves to grab our attention, but Almodóvar doesn't actually introduce the main characters until the next segment, an explosive confrontation set two decades later. Now a young man, Victor (Liberto Rabal) is working as a pizza delivery boy. When the beautiful but troubled Elena (Fransesca Neri) denies Victor a date she promised him, he manages to confront her in her apartment. An accidental gunshot fired in the room pulls two police officers into the situation. One of the cops, David (Javier Bardem), is level-headed and rational, while the other, Sancho (José Sancho), is an alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder about his disloyal wife.

Almodóvar brilliantly frames the scene from both perspectives, allowing the tension to reach a boiling crescendo before abruptly skipping forward several more years in the story. He first shows us what is really happening in the apartment, before switching to the police's viewpoint. While neither party knows what to expect from the other, we are already anticipating the showdown between the unpredictable young couple and the gun-savvy police.

Anyone who thinks that life is fair will be forced to rethink his position after seeing Live Flesh. The skirmish in the apartment should have been avoidable, but the way it spins out of control manages to completely transform the lives of the four people involved. To describe how would be to say too much about the surprises the film has in store. The drastic changes the characters face serve to make them much more interesting, giving Almodóvar an opportunity to humanize his characters, rather than dismissing them as means to a satiric goal.

Though they never cross paths in Live Flesh, Cruz and Bardem sparked a fiery romance in another saucy Spanish film, Bigas Luna's Jamón Jamón. Under Almodóvar's guidance, Bardem gives an amazing performance, simultaneously playing off the audience's pity and contempt. A relatively new face in Spanish cinema, Rabal may not come across as passionate as Antonio Banderas did in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, but he proves capable of tackling a much more complex role. If Rabal can cross over to American film, he seems quite capable of giving Banderas a run for his money as the reigning latino heartthrob.

Consequences establish Elena as the object of both Victor's and David's affections, pitting the two characters against one another in a conflict that ultimately affects far more people than you might expect. If Almodóvar's style seems watered down in Live Flesh, a face-off between Victor and David reassures us that his unique sense of humor is still intact: the two rivals temporarily break off a fist fight and turn their attention to a televised soccer match to cheer a goal for their team. In another scene, Victor asks his lover for a candid evaluation of his sexual technique, only to receive a rather eager critique of everything he did wrong.

If anything, Almodóvar appears to have more control over his form here than in his previous films. He seems to be keeping his style in check, focusing on the content of the film and limiting quirky directorial flourishes. As a result, Live Flesh invites viewers in rather than distancing them from the material. The sex may not be as steamy before, and the humor may be somewhat diluted, but the overall product is clearly the work of a man who has control over the film he is making. And that's definitely a good thing.