The vicissitudes of three relationships in a Spanish village is the basis for young Madrid director Iciar Bollain's second feature, Flores De Otro Mundo (Flowers From Another World).

When a chirruping, expectant bus-load of Central American women arrives for a bachelor party at a remote Spanish village, they are greeted lasciviously by the village's lonely male inhabitants.

The contrast between the highly colourful newcomers - the flowers of the title - and the dour, earthy villagers is almost absurdly extreme, but the deal seems pretty simple; financial security in exchange for companionship.

The trade-off, however, proves to be more complicated, and the mood in the village soon turns sour. Patricia (Lisette MejÌa, in her screen debut) an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, is a mother of two who teams up with the shy but steadfast Damian (Luis Tosar) - and finds that his hostile mother comes as part of the package. Meanwhile, wealthy middle-aged builder Carmelo (José Sancho) tries, and fails, to impress the flighty Milady (Mairilyn Torres, another first-timer), a young Cuban gold-digger who is only after his money.

Co-written with Spanish author Julio Llamazares, Bollain's script skillfully offsets the two inter-racial couples with a third, all-Spanish romance between another villager Alfonso (Chete Lara) and his lover Marirosi (Elena Irureta), who visits periodically from Bilbao.

Their relationship has none of the inherent difficulties which characterise the other two, but its eventual failure highlights the script's basic tenet: all relationships, irrespective of origins, are born out of mutual need, delicately balanced and threatened by the same pitfalls. This well-paced movie features very strong performances from an experienced Spanish cast which meshes well with the Dominican and Cuban newcomers. Flores... also consolidates Bollain's reputation as an intuitive director after her highly promising debut in 1995, with Hola Estas Sola? (Hi! Are You Alone?). But the movie's main achievement is to deal with such sensitive issues without ever lapsing into a heavy, anti-racist tract.

Inevitably, injustice underlies the storyline, but Bollain's film takes all three relationships at face value and not simply as tokens of a racist world. Jonathan Hollander