By María Eugenia Guerra

Even if you put a lot of faith in film critics like Roger Ebert, even if you know that Sandra Bullock is out-acted by everyone else in the Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, it is still a movie you should see.
The film's power is not the hilarity of the coterie of barraja-dealing matronly viejitas sipping juleps (people Ebert said aren't credible mainstays of the story). The power is in the ongoing and lifelong story of what happens in families, what transpires mother to child, child to mother -- what was said and everything that wasn't. That was, in fact, the power of the novel by Rebecca Wells, this 60-year story of what fashioned the mother, what hammered the daughter, and what put out for resolution their lifelong issues.
Beyond the ha-has of the irreverent Ya-Yas, who frankly rather resemble a certain echelon of early 1960s Laredo matrons who may, or may not, have been the mothers of some of my childhood friends, there is a tragic tension that has to be reckoned with in the course of the film. Had Ebert the opportunity to sit in on one of those all-dame Laredo canasta sessions while the kids swam on endless summer afternoons, he'd see the richness of the portrayals of the Ya Yas.
Because I'd read the novel, I found myself able to navigate through a plethora of flashbacks and to keep my characters straight. The NYC kidnapping/intervention of Bullock's playwright character Sidda was a bit of a stretch, but actually it was just a vehicle to make the story move from Broadway to the bayou. And speaking of vehicles, it was the land yachts that the viejitas drove that really cinched the thoroughness of their characterizations for me. Ellen Burstyn as Vivi, the mother of Sidda, was, as always, very good, as were the other Ya Yas, Maggie Smith, Shirley Knight, and Fionnula Flanagan. Fionnula looked alarmingly familiar to me.
The soundtrack to the film is excellent, another bit of magic compiled by Grammy winner T-Bone Burnett (O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Bob Dylan wrote a song just for the film ("Waitin' for You"), and what a nice surprise that is as the end credits roll past.
The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood marks the directorial debut of Callie Khouri, who wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay for Thelma & Louise.