At the heart of male bonding

'ALL women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his,'' quipped Oscar Wilde. One wonders how he would define his own case. We have come a long way since his day in recognising the importance of father/son relationships. The loving tensions of this complex bond have been reflected in a string of movies.

The most recent offering has been Sleepless in Seattle, although the treatment of the father and son relationship was slight, sentimental and glossy. But it is a good-looking movie and is tugging at heartstrings at the box office.

The most rewarding, though, is A River Runs Through It, Robert Redford's richly rewarding drama of two very different brothers, and Robert De Niro's This Boy's Life. Then there are two new releases, the first of which is simply called Mac (laser).

''There are only two ways of doing things - the right way and my way. And they are both the same thing.'' These are the words Mac (writer/director John Turturro) remembers his father saying, and the same words he screams at his brothers as an adult.

Turturro made Mac as a tribute to his father - a first generation Italian immigrant in New York. He was a carpenter. Turturro hates the way the movies tend to portray Italians as petty criminals in the Mafia and its sub-culture.

Mac follows the lives of three Italian-American brothers who grow up in Queens in the 1950s. Against the odds, they form a successful construction business. Mac's vision and sheer determination pull it off, but not before he alienates the brothers who cannot survive his relentless and violent adherence to absolute standards.

Turturro swings brilliantly from moods of raucous joy with work mates to impatient fury, to moments of tender trust with his new wife (endearingly played by his real-life wife Katherine Borowitz). There is also a quirky, if peripheral, cameo from EllenBarkin.