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Directed by Pedro Almodóvar Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Rosa María Sardá, Fernando Fernán-Gómez, Fernando Guillén, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín, Carlos Lozano. 1999 |
Manuela (Cecilia Roth) waits for Huma (Marisa Paredes) after watching her performance of A Streetcar called Desire.
Manuela and her son Esteban.
Manuela (Cecilia Roth) cares for Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz).
Manuela (Cecilia Roth), Sister Rosa's mother (Rosa María Sardá) and Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz).
Huma (Marisa Paredes) and Niña (Candela Peña).
Internationally acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar presents in Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) a celebration of feminity and sentiment.
A birthday treat turns into heart-rending tragedy for single mother Manuela (Cecilia Roth) when her teenage son Esteban is run over by a car after a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire by his favourite actress Huma Roja (Marisa Paredes).
Manuela goes to Barcelona determined to find the father of her child and finally tell him about the son he never knew he had. It is in Barcelona that the identity of her forbidden lover she has kept a secret for such long time will be finally revealed. He is a transvestite named Lola who is dying of AIDS.
However, in confronting her own past, Manuela forges a new future with Lola's transsexual best friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), church social worker Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz), pregnant with Lola's baby, and Huma when her play comes to town.
Even as the women from different fringes of society for a bond, further heartbreak, misfortune and ultimate joy lies in store for each of them.
Considered by critics worldwide and the media the finest movie Almodóvar has directed, and featuring glorious acting from the cream of Spanish cinema, All About My Mother combines warmth, love, tears and humour as it builds to an unforgettable emotional crescendo.
The recent memory of Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh made us believe that in All About My Mother, Almodóvar would escape again from his usual ways and would surprise us again. This was not the case and Almodóvar walks again through ways which he has partly walked before, and except for certain very live instances and various resolutions of very brilliant and fun scenes he does not take us to any new places.
In All About My Mother Almodóvar takes us to situations already seen in previous films but with variances of tragic and comic nature. He presents on screen very ingenious situations and ideas, moves twelve very distinct and unusual characters 'made-to-measure' for their actors throughout the story, combines drama and comedy and makes us go from tear-jerking situations to absolutely funny instances.
In All About MY Mother, Almodóvar gives himself entirely to his cast of actresses, who serve as his medium of expression. Cecilia Roth (Manuela) and the formidable Antonia San Juan (Agrado) break through the screen with her beautiful truth the first and with her grace the latter. Marisa Paredes (Huma) and Penélope Cruz (Sister Rosa) give high precision to two women of uncertain background but made believable by the two marvellous actresses. Candela Peña (Niña) and Rosa María Sardá (Sister Rosa's mother) play two supporting roles and shadow the main characters. It is a pleasure to see these six actresses together, who dessentagle the story and make it fly where Almodóvar wants it to go.
Almodóvar (and he already came up with this in The Flower of My Secret) assigns half of the film to engrossing the indirect presence, mentioned or suggested, of a character who is absent... "There are many expectations being made about this Lola. Danger of irreparable damage if she turns up and does not satisfy them". Lola is a false, inane and hollow character. If we look back we deduce that if the whole film moves around such emptiness of existence is because it is all corrupted, and the character does not live up to what is expected.
Pedro with the female cast of All About My Mother.
Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz).
Huma (Marisa Paredes) and Manuela (Cecilia Roth) become friends.
Pedro behind the camera.
All About My Mother is the final part of a what can now be considered a trilogy of Almodóvar's mature films. The trilogy starts with La Flor de Mi Secreto (The Flower of My Secret), continues with Carne Tremula (Live Flesh) and ends with Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother).
Like the first of the threesome, La Flor de Mi Secreto, it focuses on one woman's grief, in this case Manuela's (Cecilia Roth) for the loss of her son Esteban; but like the second, Carne Tremula, it boasts a complex plot and a collection of characters whose lives intersect with great precision and deadly effect.
All About My Mother is inspired by All About Eve. Like Eve, the film is about actresses and relationships between women. Mothers are like actresses in that they can symbolise, embody, educate, improvise and bring characters to life.
Almodóvar's talent has always been acknowledged as unique, but All About My Mother demonstrates how great it is as well. The storytelling is complex but not confusing; the large number of characters who anchor, explain and propel the story are individuated and brought to life to such a degree that, without distracting from Manuela's adventures we get a sense of their lives beyond their relation to her.
The decor and music are as effective as ever but less obtrusive (the decorating tips one usually expects from Almodóvar are not the first thing you notice). His trademark mixture of humour and emotion is still evident here but with a greater accent on emotion, evoked with insight and delicacy.
Almodóvar is also a great director of actors (each gets a chance to shine and all do, especially Cecilia Roth and Marisa Paredes) and a master of mise en scène. But the complexity of All About MY Mother seems to come from a better understanding of human behaviour, accompanied by great compassion, generosity and even optimism. In the hands of a lesser director All About My Mother would have poked fun at Agrado's (Antonia San Juan) condition, pitied Huma (Marisa Paredes) for being hooked on a junkie or blamed Lola (Tony Cantó) for the havoc she's wreaked. But although Almodóvar holds his characters duly responsible for their actions, he enables his audience to understand, forgive and even like them. While acknowledging that even when parents are there for their children, they cannot always protect them, the film portrays mothers who not only love but take the care to care afterwards.
All About My Mother explores vividly the universal theme of motherhood and its performance in and through a particular, and appropriate, matrix of references from a broad range of cultures: twentieth-century classics (Truman Capote, Federico García Lorca, Tennessee Williams), a tradition of queer interpretative communities (the use of the clip from All About Eve with particular reference Davis as a queer icon) and the combination of low camp and high melodrama. That such a queer film dramatises a general condition with formal elegance, nuanced observations and emotional resonance is rare indeed.
If you want to know more about Pedro Almodóvar visit ibercine's special page on the Manchego director. Pedro Almodóvar's page.
Almodóvar shooting All About My Mother in Barcelona.
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Genre: Length: 97 minutes Format: 2.35:1 Rated: 153 Awards:
See a complete list of awards for All About My Mother here |
Special Features:
Language: Spanish Subtitles:
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