Never mind the salacious title. There's not much simulated sex and no nudity at all. It's not a soft-core thriller. What it is, is nicely executed and confusing.It owes something to Hitchcock, from the credits, which resemble those of Saul Bass, to the lush orchestral score which borrows heavily from Bernard Herrmann, chiefly "Vertigo" and "Taxi Driver." I was half hoping for a lot of the disgusting gratuitous nudity that everyone complains about an it opens promisingly enough -- a group therapy meeting of "sex addicts" in which everyone has a different story. Among the group's member are Javier Bardem and Victoria Avril. Avril's story is that, as a young girl, she helped a butcher tie the knot in his tie just before his wedding. He became excited and balled her three times in the back of the butcher shop. "Everything smelled of meat." Since then she's had one affair after another, even though she's married to a police officer, Carmelo Gomez. I forget what Bardem's story was but it couldn't have been as interesting.Then all sorts of tsuris follows. I frankly was lost. Bardem has a problem with some kind of illegal tapes -- or something. The few clips we see don't look very illegal. One shows an ordinary boxing match. A dead body turns up in the trunk of an unused car, in the front seat of which Bardem and Avril have been spontaneously coupling, so we're told. (We don't see anything.) Avril's husband, the cop, is trying to track down the murderer and, after discovering his wife's affair with Bardem, does all he can to pin it on Bardem. It leads to some tense moments.I don't think I'll describe the resolution. At least I understood it, I think. I still don't know exactly how or why it reaches the point it does, but I'm sure of one thing -- it does reach that point.Bardem is pretty good. I'd only seen him as the cold-blooded hit man in "No Country For Old Men." In that essay, he spoke slowly with a slight gargle in his voice, his face expressionless, his hair combed slantwise over his forehead, his big dark eyes dominating his features. Here, he's a rather ordinary screenplay writer who speaks at a normal tempo and looks like anybody else. I was impressed by the difference in his approach to the two contrasting roles. It's what's meant by "range" in acting.Victoria Avril is now middle aged, no longer the young lady of "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down", but she's still beautifully and unwittingly sexy. She wears a semi-startled expression throughout, as if she were a frightened bird in a cage. It suits the role.There are still several points, some of them important, that I'm unclear on, but I've taken steps to correct this by enrolling in a therapy group that promises to promote viewer comprehension.

What I liked about this picture: the cool camera-work (airport lounges have rarely been as attractive, and there are evocative scenes in toilets and bedrooms); the music, always urgent and involving even if it owes much to Bernard Herrman; the identity of the transsexual character is well integrated into the story, not an add-on (I thought of Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game).What I didn't like: the red herrings in the story line, meant to throw us off the scent but only serving to annoy the viewer; the large number of characters that makes following the plot all the harder.What kept me watching was Victoria Abril, playing the detective's wife with a panache that made me regret she has not made more films we can see in North America.

The plot of this film is ultimately undecipherable. You'll have more luck figuring out "Finnegan's Wake." Were I to see this film several more times, I still would not be able to determine what is reality, what is fantasy, what is taking place in real time, what is taking place in imaginative time. There are flashbacks within flashbacks until chaos reigns. Entire plot lines, such as that of Jareño, are unrelated to others. The opening sequence will certainly draw you into the film, but it has virtually nothing to do with the main characters in the film. Both Javier and Felix could be described as the film's protagonist; whose story is this? I can't imagine that many people would stay with the film more than twenty minutes, thirty minutes at the most. I stayed with the film, naively thinking that in the denouement all of the pieces of plot would come clear. Unfortunately, this is not the case.The revelation made in the climax about the character Jacinto is something most viewers will probably be able to predict from the moment Jacinto first comes unto the screen. (I agree with another commentator here; watch the Adam's apple.) This character transformation (shall I say?) has been used in a number of films. And the plot device of having someone get away with murder has become ordinary. Just as in Woody Allen's new film, "Match Point," a coincidence here allows the real killer to go uncharged with the crime.The credits are a direct steal from Saul Bass's credits from "Vertigo," and the music is imitative of Bernard Herrmann's score for the same film, which led me to expect something far more than this film delivers.Save yourself a rental fee and a headache as well.

"Between Your Legs" is a provocative title for a less than provocative film which may wear you out with its busy, convoluted tale and anticlimactic conclusion. The film tells of a man and a woman who meet in a "sexaholics anonymous" meeting and become involved in deceit, betrayal, sex, murder, suicide, and a whole bunch of yadayadayada. Although this film features some fine Spanish actors and is a well composed and stylish shoot, the story is just too much ado about too little with insufficient payoff. Forget the title as it has nothing to do with anything is this drama which could have been about the undoing of a man because of sexual addiction or a murder mystery or even cheap sexual sensationalism but instead plays out like so much busy work with little to praise, little to fault, and very little to care about. Not recommended for nonSpanish speakers. (C+)