A Sermon For All Britneys

"I can't even take care of myself; how am I going to take care of a kid?" the beautiful Nina (Tammy Blanchard) says to the Jesus-like — or perhaps more Joseph-like — José (Eduardo Verástegui) in "Bella," by the Mexican-American director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde.

It's a story as familiar as the continuing saga of Britney Spears, except that Britney never thought to use her own incompetence as an excuse for aborting her children. Nina, who does think of it, has none of Britney's craziness. There is no obvious substance abuse or bad driving. We can't imagine her shaving her head.

At worst, she seems a bit disorganized, and she has a problem with punctuality that gets her fired as a waitress at the restaurant run by José's brother, Manny (Manny Perez). José, who works there as head chef, decides suddenly to take the day off and find out what's wrong in Nina's life.

The answer is not quite enough, unfortunately. We learn that she's pregnant and disinclined to keep the child, partly because her own childhood was an unhappy one. Her mother had gone into an emotional tailspin after her father's death. "I raised myself — and her," she tells José.

It's reason enough, perhaps, for her not to want children of her own, but how, then, are we supposed to believe that she's unable to look after a child?

Nina might have other problems, but we never find out what they are. Her refusal even to consider marrying the anonymous father of her unborn child, in particular, suggests a personal disorder that the film doesn't care to explore. Why has she been sleeping with a man she doesn't love, or even like? The reticence of Mr. Monteverde and fellow screenwriters Patrick Million and Leo Severino on these questions is a pity. Everything we see of Nina shows her as being much too pulled together, competent, and attractive for someone who is supposed to be so helpless. We may get the feeling that we're being protected from the knowledge of the cold, calculating ruthlessness with which she decides to "take care of" her pregnancy.

But the reason for that moral continuity error will soon become obvious to the audience. It is that "Bella" is propaganda — well-made propaganda, to be sure, and with a message that I happen to support, but still propaganda.

As such, it has the limitations of the form, the chief of which is that the characters tend to the emblematic and don't look quite real, and that we're aware from the start that the deck has been stacked and the dramatic conflict has to come out the way it does.

That having been said, Mr. Monteverde does a good job of keeping our interest. The first we see of José, he is at the beach, closely observing a little girl as she plays in the surf. Is he, perhaps, a pervert? Then we flash back to a time when José, minus his Jesus beard, is a soccer star and hero of the Latino community. He is about to sign a big contract to play professionally and is apparently without a care in the world. How does he make the transition from this rich, famous, stylish athlete and sex symbol to the brooding, bearded figure behind the stove in his brother's restaurant? The sense of doomed youth hangs over the film from the opening voice-over at the beach: "My grandmother always said if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." In other words, he, like Nina, experiences a plan-changing — and life-changing — event, but we're not told what it is until near the end.

Likewise, José's tense relationship with Manny, who is furious with him for walking out just as the lunch crowd is about to arrive, conceals a family secret that will only be revealed gradually, though opportunely, as José takes Nina from the city to Long Island to meet the rest of his family.

Like José and Nina, José's mother (Angélica Aragón), father (Jaime Tirelli), brother Eduardo (Ramon Rodriguez), and other family members are too attractive to be quite real. Their job is to stand for the joys of family life that Nina, intent on her abortion, has never known. Such relentless life-affirmation extends even to a blind beggar they meet on the way with a sign that reads, "God closed my eyes; now I can see."

Obviously, it would take a woman much more stony-hearted than Nina to hold out against all this.

I don't want to be too hard on a movie that I did enjoy and that preaches what I, too, believe. The Sunday-school lesson is right, true, and much-needed, but it's still, alas, a Sunday-school lesson.

jbowman@nysun.com