Your clothes are beautiful!

Here is the points: Sentence: 你——的——衣——服——很——漂——亮! Phrases: 很 漂 亮 pretty beautiful 还 好 吧 it is ok. Words: 真的 real, indeed 漂亮 beautiful, pretty

Beijing game

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瓮安溺亡女生活怨气重 当事男解释为何做俯卧撑

刘言超说，他做到第三个俯卧撑时，李树芬从这座大堰桥上跳入河中。

17岁的李树芬溺亡于深夜，身旁只有两名目击者，这离奇的情节引发了种种流言，并最
终酿成“6·28”打砸烧事件……她到底是个怎样的人？记者通过采访她的亲属、班主任、同学和伙伴，试图还原一个花季少女的真实人生

“17年，犹如只看着她过了17个大年三十。”7月8日凌晨，在贵州瓮安县文峰路“留一手特色烤鱼店”，39岁的黎兴财皱着眉，掰着手指头回忆着。

黎兴财本是当地一名普通的小商人，但“6·28”打砸烧事件后，因为特殊的身份与经历，他骤然变得“暂时特殊起来”——他是李树芬的“外表公”，也就是李树芬外公的表弟。

黎兴财口中的“她”，就是李树芬。6月21日子夜，她和初二的同班同学王娇及两名男青年陈光权及刘言超到县城旁西门河大堰桥玩耍，“溺水而亡”。这最终酿成了震惊全国的瓮安“6·28”打砸烧事件。

成长：17个“大年三十”

李树芬和黎兴财都是瓮安玉华乡雷文村泥坪组人，他们的老家间只隔着一户人家，相距只有10米远。

1991年9月4日（农历七月廿六日），李树芬降生在这个坐落在山谷中的小村庄，比她的哥哥李树勇晚两年诞生。如愿以偿地儿女双全，父母李秀荣与罗平碧逢人便笑。

李秀荣夫妇是地地道道的农民，身上保留了原汁原味的当地乡土痕迹。黎兴财说，李秀荣早年辍学，16岁结婚，17岁得子，不到20岁时又有了女儿。李秀荣夫妇主要以种植烟草为生，一家人每年烤烟可以收入一万多元，此外，李秀荣这个人“勤快，能干”，除了田地农活外，他还开起了拖拉机，每年能赚一大把“外快”。为此，“这家人的小日子过得还算红火，在全村属于上等收入人家”。

李树芬出生后，黎兴财等村民纷纷上门庆祝。那时候，小树芬胖乎乎的，只知道趴在母亲怀中吃奶、哭泣与睡觉。一年后，时年24岁的黎兴财结婚了。婚后，他带着妻子远离家乡，前往厦门等地打工，直到今年两口子才回瓮安县城开了“留一手特色烤鱼店”。

黎兴财回忆道，在外打工期间，他每年春节都会回家探望父母，报平安。每年回家，他都能见到“邻家的小女孩李树芬”。他说，十多年来，李树芬的成长，在他脑袋中就像过电影一样，简短而富有变化：春节到了，李树芬穿着厚衣服偎依在父母的怀中；春节到了，李树芬穿着小鞋子在村口泥路上与其他小伙伴一起奔跑；春节到了，李树芬梳起了小辫子……春节到了，李树芬身高已经超过了1.5米，鹅蛋形的脸，中发齐肩，散发着大姑娘的气息。她见到黎兴财依旧亲切地喊着“外表公”，但人已变得羞涩起来。

从村里人那里，黎兴财得知，李树芬不但乖巧，学习也可以，与哥哥一起在20公里外的瓮安县城读书。

今年5月的一天，李树芬与另一女孩到黎兴财新开张不久的烤鱼店玩。那一天，李树芬很高兴，临走时还不忘恭维外表公“你店的生意不错嘛”。黎兴财说，他留李树芬在店里一起吃饭，但“这个羞涩的女孩”有点不好意思，未吃饭找个空子就转身离开了。

这是黎兴财与李树芬生前见的最后一面。当他再次见到李树芬时，已经是6月22日凌晨3时许，李树芬的尸体刚从西门河捞上来，她已经永远闭上了双眼，口鼻中满是泥沙。

就这样，李树芬走过了她的17年。黎兴财这才意识到，17年原来是这么短暂，在他的眼里，李树芬的17年，短暂地犹如过了17个“大年三十”，简单得只有一个季节：冬天。

如今，黎兴财与所有认识李树芬的人一样，一直试图从脑海中调出有关李树芬生前的所有记忆，他为17年的短暂叹息不已，也为没能多接触了解这名小女孩而深感遗憾。

单调：哥哥念了4所学校

李树芬的17年是短暂的，也是单调的。

早报记者前往雷文村泥坪组，试图了解李树芬生前的更多细节，过往村民都表示：“知道，李树芬，一个乖巧的小丫头”。但再细问，他们大都瞪大了眼睛，搓着双掌努力回忆着，随后，摇着头，“都记不得了，反正那小女孩从小到大，看起来都挺乖巧”。

乖巧，成了李树芬生前最直接的写照，也是外人对她最多的描述。李树芬的班主任张国民说，李树芬乖巧，听话；她的多名同学也说“李树芬，人挺好，很乖”；而她的父母在向外人描述女儿时，更是带有称赞的口吻，“很乖”。

除了“乖巧”，在外人眼里，李树芬似乎没有其他的色彩。或许，她的人生履历更适合用这个词描述：单调。

女孩黎红英（化名）与李树芬年纪相仿，与李树芬同村，小学同班同学，初中又是校友。她说，小学三年级以前，她与李树芬同班，李树芬的童年与其他小女孩没什么区别，喜欢玩，喜欢跟同学一起做游戏、奔跑。

但小学四年级后，李树芬转学去了玉华小学，两人再次相聚时，已经是4年后的瓮安第三中学。黎红英初二，李树芬初一。

黎红英说，李树芬的学业与生活是随着哥哥李树勇一起的。起初，李树芬与哥哥一起在雷文小学就读，两人相差三个年级；后来，李树勇考取了玉华初中，刚满10岁的李树芬就离开了村子，跟着哥哥前往玉华乡的玉华小学就读，借宿在叔叔家；3年后，李树勇考取了位于瓮安县城的高中，那时，李树芬原本该就读玉华初中，但她还是跟随着哥哥来到了瓮安县城，只不过在瓮安第三小学重新读了六年级，一年后，考取了瓮安第三中学。

就这样，从小学到初中，李树芬分别就读了4所学校，但在外人眼中，她始终与哥哥“捆绑”在一起。

在瓮安三中初二（6）班，程刚（化名）的座位与李树芬就隔着几个课桌，但两年来，他对李树芬的印象是“上课认真听课，下课趴在桌子上睡觉，要么就跑出去玩”，而两年内的唯一变化是“初一她没有戴眼镜，初二戴了。”

班主任张国民说，李树芬也有自己的几个玩伴，也常与他们开小玩笑，但她的日常交往，仅限于哥哥，还有那几名玩伴。她的一些个人故事，并不为外人所知。

孤单：喜欢上网用QQ聊天

李树芬生前的17年短暂而单调，但当她死后，她的内心世界以及那些单调深处尚不为人知的东西，犹如各种死因传言一样，变得扑朔迷离。

班主任张国民说，从外表看，李树芬绝对不是那种很内向的人，她在班级内虽然不捣蛋调皮，但也属于正常的类型。他说，他曾透过窗户看到，课余期间或者自习课时，李树芬时常转动着身体与脖子，与周围的同学说笑或是讨论问题。

程刚是初二（6）班最腼腆的男生，平时与女生说几句话脸都会羞得通红，心里生怕别人说“男女间的闲话”，为此，他逐渐被很多同学边缘化。但李树芬不同，“见面时，她都会笑着主动与我打招呼。” 程刚说，对此，他虽然感觉很紧张与尴尬，但他也很感谢李树芬的热情，不过因为害怕别人说闲话，他总是匆忙逃掉或是扭过头。

在程刚心里，李树芬已是他的一个朋友了。但李树芬的真正生活，还有鲜为人知的另一面。

李树芬、周艳（化名）、王娇、刘露（化名）四人在瓮安三小是同班同学，到了初中后又是同一个班，为此，四人的关系很好，平时经常在一起玩。李树芬通过周艳认识了陈光权，刘露不看好他俩，而王娇亲眼目睹了李树芬的死亡。正是通过这三人，李树芬那些鲜为人知的故事，逐渐清晰起来。

离开学校后，李树芬喜欢上网用QQ聊天，“我陪她去过几次网吧”，刘露说。她跟黎红英等人告诉早报记者，李树芬时常上网，而一上网就是用QQ聊天，“每次上网时间1个多小时吧”。

李树芬在QQ上与网友都聊了哪些内容？刘露与黎红英表示“具体不晓得”，但刘露说，李树芬死亡前一个多月，她听周艳、王娇等人说，李树芬在网上认识了一个男生，两人聊得很投机，双方还有了那种意思，“就是网恋了”。

但几天后，刘露在街头撞见李树芬与一个男孩子一起逛街，这个男生就是陈光权。刘露听李树芬说，她6月6日左右通过周艳认识陈光权，两人彼此都有好感，交往几天后就开始谈恋爱了。“他（陈光权）对我挺好的，很关心我。”李树芬这样解释与陈光权交往的缘由。陈光权则对早报记者表示，李树芬并不算漂亮，也不算温顺，但自己就是喜欢她，原因也说不清楚。

21岁的陈光权与18岁的刘言超都曾是瓮安县造纸厂的职工，而周艳的父亲也是该纸厂的职工，周艳就住在纸厂内，他们因此相识。

李树芬迷恋聊天、短时间交了“懂得关心人”的男友陈光权，一些人就此认为，由于过早远离家乡，李树芬的生活有些孤单；远离父母等亲人，也让她内心缺少关爱。

怨气：感觉活着挺窝囊

在知情人的描述中，比李树芬年长两岁的哥哥李树勇被越来越多地被提及，李树芬10岁开始，就远离家乡跟哥哥在外求学，7年来，跨在成年门槛前后的李树勇，他的角色从哥哥逐渐转变为“哥哥兼临时性的父母”。

此前，有人说李树芬家有重男轻女的思想，王娇曾见兄妹俩打架，父母总是偏袒哥哥，而每次给两个人的零花钱都是哥哥多，妹妹少。王娇此前曾透露，跳河前，她没发现李树芬有异常现象，只是最近一段时间以来，李树芬的情绪不怎么好，常抱怨父母偏向哥哥，对她不好、苛刻，考试成绩下滑就会挨骂。而李树芬跳水后，王娇多次打电话给其哥哥李树勇，电话那端李树勇还在生李树芬的闷气，骂“这个死丫头，死了算了”。

陈光权昨天告诉早报记者，6月21日晚他们喝酒吃饭后的闲谈，也就是聊聊家常，没发现什么异常，甚至当晚李树芬还“很高兴”，喝了半杯米酒（大约50毫升）。不过他说，李树芬曾告诉他，她和哥哥关系很差，经常吵架打架。而且周艳还曾告诉他，李树芬心情不好时也常一个人喝闷酒。王娇也透露，李树芬曾与“网友”通电话，引起了哥哥的不满，为此，兄妹俩多次争吵。

黎红英记得，三年前，李秀荣夫妇叫李树芬追随哥哥一起去瓮安县城念书，但为了免交1800元的“借读费”，李树芬就退回到瓮安三小复读了六年级（从瓮安三小升入瓮安三中，不用交纳借读费）。而李秀荣在接受媒体采访时曾说，6月9日，他来瓮安县城，给了儿子500元，给女儿留了50元的零花钱。

李树芬跟哥哥租住在县城城关三小旁一栋三层楼房的三楼。据相关人士透露，周艳在接受官方调查组调查时表示，李树芬曾说，她负责日常洗菜做饭、洗衣服，但哥哥对她不好，经常与他吵架，她感觉活着挺窝囊的，怨气很大，有时一个人在家偷偷地哭。

学校：加强对租房学生管理

李树芬的17年，剥除与死亡相关的诸多细节，这名女孩留给人们的只有平凡。

张国民说，李树芬在班上的学习成绩并不拔尖，只是中上等；她老实，不调皮，总是与“坏事”无关；她没有其他特长，班级体育比赛等活动中，你也不会发现她的身影，“她是那种普通的女孩，平凡得叫人甚至想不起来”。

如今想来，张国民也感慨，就是这么一个平凡的女孩，背后却有着鲜为人知的故事，而她的死亡居然引发了一个小城的不安。

瓮安三中的语文教师陈老师说，在瓮安地区，许多家长都很重视教育，一些乡下家长，为了使自己的子女获得更好的教育，总是想方设法把年纪尚小的孩子送到县城来读书，这些孩子远离家乡后，要么寄宿在亲戚家，要么就在校外租房住。

“我们学校有了一批这样的学生。”陈老师说道。而据张国民统计，瓮安三中初二（6）班，今年参加期末考试的有87人，大约有26人填写的户口在乡下，“当然，这些人的父母并不全是在乡下。”

据瓮安三中的多名班主任说，学校已经要求班主任重新统计学生的户籍，“估计下学期要对在校外租住的那些来自农村的学生进行更有效的管理。”

而当地职能部门也在加强对网吧的管理，时常进行突击检查，防止学生们暑期迷恋网络聊天。

瓮安事件当事人称面对桥栏突然想做俯卧撑

近日，陈光权、刘言超与王娇分别回到了自己的家中。9日23时许，早报记者电话采访了刘言超。刘解答了“为何那晚桥头做俯卧撑。”

刘言超说，21日晚，4人来到大堰桥后，他就站在桥中间附近。大堰桥全长40.3米，宽1.5米，桥栏高0.8米，桥栏之间的宽度，正好适合成年人趴在桥栏上做俯卧撑。刘言超说，他当时将两只手扶在了一端的桥栏上，一条腿搭上了另一端的桥栏，另一条腿蹬在了桥栏立面上，做起了俯卧撑。

大晚上的，为何那时偏偏想起做俯卧撑？刘言超说，他知道很多人对他桥头做俯卧撑的动作，很感兴趣，议论也很多。他说，那晚大家已经聊了一段时间，有点聊累了，他站在桥头，面对桥栏就突然想起了做俯卧撑，“就是想做”，并表示“还能强身健体嘛”。

刘言超目前赋闲在家，他想过段日子找个别的工作。

昨日下午，早报记者在瓮安县造纸厂见到了陈光权。他正蹲在厂房内，一手拿着“改锥”，一手持着铝合金窗框进行组装。他已经重新工作两天了。据了解，该厂早已倒闭，部分厂房由一位职工承包经营铝合金装潢，刘言超、陈光权目前是学徒。

陈光权脸上布满了灰尘与油渍，头发蓬松着，从外表看，比实际年龄苍老很多。陈光权不排斥记者，也不回避一些敏感问题，言语朴实，他说李树芬的离去，对他的打击很大，但日子，还得继续过。

王娇回到了天文镇老家。昨日，在电话采访中，这名初二女生已经变得很敏感，她与她的家人一直在追问早报记者：“你采访我，经过同意了吗？”

◇ 相关链接

6月21日20许，李树芬与女友王娇一起邀约出去玩，同李树芬的男朋友陈光权及陈的朋友刘言超等吃过晚饭后，步行到西门河边大堰桥处闲谈。李树芬在与刘言超闲谈时，突然说:“跳河死了算了，如果死不成就好好活下去。”刘见状急忙拉住李树芬，制止其跳河行为。约十分钟后，陈光权提出要先离开，当陈走后，刘见李树芬心情平静下来，便开始在桥上做俯卧撑。当刘做到第三个俯卧撑的时候，听到李树芬大声说“我走了”，便跳下河。新闻发布会几分钟后，“做俯卧撑”一语即开始流行于网络。 （据7月1日贵州瓮安“6·28”事件新闻发布会） 早报记者 于松 来源：东方早报

film review: osama

film review: osama
part 1

Inspired by an afghan movie, osama, i discovered the importance of an everyday issue that we do not pay attention-identity. identity is formed in subtle ways, but with traces. In the following, I will analyze the formulation and factors of identity and give examples to issustrate the concepts.


According to Gloria Anzaldua, "identity is not a bunch of little cubbyholes stuffed respectively with intellect, race, sex class, vocation, gender. Identity flows between, over , aspects of a person. Identity is a river- a process." simply saying, gender, sex, races, memory and appearance are means to find our identity. But identity, itself is an ever-changing position and perception of a person formed by self and others. Generally, we cna divide four factors of identity, including biological characters, social acceptance, cultural influence and self-perception.

Biological characters is the very basic identity of a person. This includes the inborn sex and races. we are born with identity. since our birth, identity is given from our parents and our biological sex. we are our mother and father's son. We are male or female. Male and female is said to be a "foundation stone of a self-identity". But as we grow up, identity is no longer given from only the inborn characters and features. Rather, more factors are included and a unique identity is then formed continuously.

In the movie "osama", the Afgan girl needs to cross-dress as a boy for a living a living. In the school, the boys make her climb the tree so as to prove herself as a boy. Identity, here, is proved by behavior(we also can say by performance). One of the factors to determine one's identity is by the society. this can be affected by the social class, existing categories and social interaction. What you do and how people perceive can form an identity. this part of identity is from other people. The social factor of identity emphasizes the social identity, rather than self identity.

Due to different degree of oppenness of different countries, different number of accepting identities is formed. for example, in an open country like America, people can accept more than several categories of people like heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, queer and etc. Howerer, in traditional countries like afghan and pakistan, number of accepting categories is limited. People only accept a few or even one kind of people of heterosexual. the social pressure can extract the non-normative categories like homosexual out of the community. This means that as if you perceive yourself as a homosexual, but as the people in your community do not accept the existence of homosexual, your social identity will not be formed with your self identity. In this kind of community, social identity will not be formed with your self identity. In this kind of community, social identity is limited according to the degree of acceptance and approval by the society.(the relation of social identity and self identity)

In addition, another formulation factor of identity is the cultural influence. Cultural influence seems similar to social acceptance(not similar, but related very closely). However, if social acceptance is by the people, cultural influence is by the tradition and religion. The cultural factor includes the country tradition, religion and etiquette. this factor affects both the self identity and social identity. the religion will influence the free-will of the people and gradually prohibit the formulation of identity that is not allowed in the religion code. The person himself/herself changes its self identity due to the influence of the tradition and religion, while other people having same religion and tradition change the social identity on this person.

For example, a Muslim girl living in america is a homosexual in nature. identity of homosexual is acceptable by the society. However, as a Muslim, she is educated that homosexual thinking and behavior do not please the God. she will formulate her self identity as a heterosexual girl. This is, then, not the social factor of identity, but the cultural factor, In her community of Muslims, they will also have a social identity on her as well.

part 1

film review: all about my mother

故事是描述在西班牙發生 的小故事，角色間的性别來了個很大的嘗試，有些角色隻能用queer來形容他們的身份。看畢這部電影，我不禁問到甚麽是男？什麽是女？是現代社會才有男不男，女不女的人嗎？他們這樣做動機何在？這些跟有否超出道德底線？

男女的分辨已經不能單從生理上，DNA來判決，Esteban是男人，心理上有時也很難區分，可以随心情而改變；Lola顯然是女性的。所以 從總的來說，queer是一個當我們不能顯易地分出男女時所給予的一名稱。但這裏牽涉到常規性理論，大多數人覺得 是的就爲之常規，當有情況跟這個常規出現相違背，就是abnormal的一類，人們會把這些當成queer。

很多人都覺得 Lola是女的時候，他可能覺得自己是男的也可以。還有自主性的支配，因此當我們說某某是男、女或 queer時，是一般人的角度出發，還是當時人自主認爲，這又是另一回事。人的性别與性取向在現代社會是可以分開的，就是出現很多男、女同志的區分。一個人的心理能夠改變，随着科技的發展，生理上都可以改變，變得符合自己的性的取向。可是，在電影就出現了一個有趣的情況，就是lola隻改變了女性的一個性征——胸部，而保留男性的生殖器官。有人覺得他可能是想賺更多的錢，所以保留下來，好讓能夠賺男或女客人的錢。但我個人認爲這不成立。過分的我行我素，把所有前人覺得是理所當然的男女之别的道德和世人的眼光都抛棄不顧，他所從事的工作，某種程度上都可以看出這點。

我們這一代，受到西文文化的影響，舊有的傳統受到沖擊，男女的角色可以來個一百八十度的大轉變。但是這種突變從何而來？也許片中給了答案，Manuela的懷孕，她兒子因車禍喪命，Rosa懷有Lola的孩子等 等 ，基本上所有他們人生中的大變化都是出現在年青時。能力上，這段時期的人剛有自己的賺錢能力，有了去改變的條件；心态上，他們都是反叛的，而且是屬于反叛後期，從少年時對父母管教的反叛，轉移到對社會上既有規定、制度的對抗。于是，在尋找自我的意識下，能力與心态的配合下，這個年齡的人最容易做出這樣的決定。

最後談道德。中西方可能在行爲上有所不同，但在本質上沒有太大的不同（不通！）中西都覺得同性戀是有違常規，世界不能容納的。但片中帶出不是這個問題，而另一種身份認定的問題。男的花上很多金錢，希望透過高科技的整形手術，把自己變成一個女性。道德主義上一定會認爲這是不可接受的，不能理解的。如像lola一樣，隻改變一半又有沒有問題？這都是不能接受的吧。可是道德的底線在哪裏？什麽的情況才會被接受？爲什麽？真的要說這個問題，篇幅一定很長。但簡單來講，要知道道德的底線，隻要從它産生的原因，大緻可明白當中的意義。除了法律之外，爲了使社會更加穩定，道德觀念萌生。有了這種觀念，人們就不會做出很大膽的事。這是當權者希望 保留和捍衛道德的目的。

此外，道德對人與人的關系都有重大的影響，比如說倫理關系，維持住長幼有序、互敬互讓的社會。因此queer的出現，仿佛意味着另一種沖擊道德的力量，所以 道德層面上，不論怎 樣都不會被接受。總的來說，我覺得 人與人之間需要的是互相的尊重，而不是遵守什麽道德。也許我的道德觀就是不做出傷害别人的事的大前提下，個人還是能夠有絕大多數自決的權利。可是一但侵犯到别人，不論是什麽的情況，都應該停止。這種中西結合的道德觀也是現在社會最普遍的看法。不過，也許随着人們的改變，終有一天這個看法也會随之而改變。

Film review:Turtles Can Fly

Film review:'Turtles Can Fly' Reaches High

By Michael O'SullivanWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, April 22, 2005; Page WE37

BAHMAN GHOBADI'S third narrative feature, after "A Time for Drunken Horses" and "Marooned in Iraq," is far and away the Iranian Kurdish filmmaker's best work -- and that's saying something. With the force of a boot to the stomach, "Turtles Can Fly" has the ability to render viewers not just speechless and breathless but in a kind of emotional free fall, in a way that his earlier work, stunning in its own right, only hinted at.



It's a soaring achievement, without ever leaving the ground. Set in a small, mountainous Kurdish village, during the days just before and just after the American invasion of Iraq, "Turtles" centers around the 13-year-old "Satellite" (Soran Ebrahim), so nicknamed for his expertise in hooking up the scavenged hardware necessary for TV reception. But that's not his only skill. Scooting around town on his tricked-out bicycle, and sporting a backwards baseball cap while spouting random English phrases, Satellite is also adept at arms trading and other forms of hustling, riding herd on a crew of juvenile mine sweepers who earn their dangerous living clearing the surrounding fields of live explosives, risking life and limb in exchange for a bit of cash. Soran Ebrahim plays the central role in Bahman Ghobadi's "Turtles Can Fly." (Ifc Films)

Into this horrifying milieu, which writer-director Ghobadi captures with an unblinking gaze that manages to be both deadpan and darkly comic, comes a strange and impossibly sad family unit: the orphaned Agrin (Avaz Latif) -- a gorgeous, world-weary adolescent -- and her armless, possibly clairvoyant brother Hengov (Hiresh Feysal Rahman), whose skill at disarming undetonated mines with his teeth (yes, teeth) more than hints at the source of his handicap. Traveling with them is a blind toddler, Riga (Abdol Rahman Karim), a boy who must be constantly kept on a leash so as not to wander into a minefield, pond or off a cliff, and yet who seems no more a burden to the saintly, long-suffering Hengov -- his brother? father? uncle? -- than Hengov's own physical impairment does. Something about the child is eating at Agrin, though. Yet exactly what that is, and how it will ultimately affect these three tragic figures -- as well as the irrepressible Satellite, who has become smitten with the beautiful, depressive girl and who will eventually become caught up, physically and emotionally, in her fate -- will not be made clear until the film's end. As he demonstrated with "Drunken Horses," Ghobadi has a gift for working with child actors, especially disabled ones, yet he exploits neither their infirmities nor their youth for our sympathy. There is a gravitas to Ghobadi's juvenile characters that, as with all classic tragedy heroes, moves us to experience both pity and fear for them. In the end, our catharsis comes like a thud, not in response to the fall of the mighty from on high but of the weak from their already low vantage point.

Turtles, of course, cannot fly (although one does seem to, very briefly, under Ghobadi's poetic camerawork). His film, on the other hand, takes to the air like a doomed but beautiful bird, tracing a flight, not of fancy, but of aching, poignant artlessness. TURTLES CAN FLY (Unrated, 95 minutes) -- Contains some disturbing and violent imagery. In Kurdish with subtitles. At Landmark's E Street Cinema and Landmark's Bethesda Row.

Film review: sex and the city By MANOHLA DARGIS

Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw in New Line Cinema's "Sex and the City".

May 30, 2008

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: May 30, 2008

A little Botox goes a long way in “Sex and the City,” but a little decent writing would have gone even further. A dumpy big-screen makeover of that much-adored small-screen delight, the movie was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, one of the guiding lights and bright wits of the original series, based on Candace Bushnell’s newspaper columns and subsequent book. Once again, Sarah Jessica Parker has stepped into the dizzyingly high heels of Carrie Bradshaw, that postmodern Lorelei Lee — a hardly working New York writer with a passion for men and Manolos — but this time she’s taken a terrible tumble.


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From left, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon.

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Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth in the film version of “Sex and the City.”

Fans of the show were accustomed to Carrie’s falls, metaphoric and literal (as in her spectacularly horrible trip during her catwalk promenade); they were crucial to the show’s appeal, softening its hard, brittle edges. Then in her mid-30s, Carrie was one of New York’s most fearless of the zipless It Girls, able to leap tall men in a single bound without batting a single mascaraed eyelash, but as the show’s nifty opening credit sequence reminded you, episode after episode, she wasn’t above getting muck on her tutu. Her vulnerability — and that of her girlfriends — was the badly kept secret of the show, the glue holding together the froufrou, the lunches, those absolutely fabulous and ghastly clothes and all that muscly man bait.



The froufrou and the lunches are back, as are, kind of, Carrie’s three girlfriends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), all tricked out with their customary accessories (men, children, handbags). Also back and in and out of Carrie’s bed is Mr. Big (Chris Noth), the longtime lover and habitual heartbreaker with whom she had (hallelujah) reunited during the show’s bitter and sweet finale four years ago. Written by Mr. King, that episode opened with Carrie wandering Paris in a funk and then stumbling into bliss by literally falling to the ground with Big. At once melancholic and defiantly hopeful, it was the kind of rueful happy ending that didn’t make you choke on your own tears.



“Sex and the City” delivered the television goods for six seasons, no small thing in the pop culture annals. That should have been enough or at least plenty for all concerned, but Ms. Parker apparently felt compelled to go big screen, making good on a project that had started to come together in 2004, only to fall apart over money issues and Ms. Cattrall’s reluctance to climb aboard. I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways.



There are no surprises in the movie, at least not good ones. On opening, all the peas are in their designer pods, from Carrie and Big cooing in his swank New York digs to Samantha and her boy toy, Smith (Jason Lewis), sunning in a seaside Los Angeles perch. Charlotte and her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), are nesting in Manhattan; Miranda and her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), are bunking in Brooklyn. All is right in this carefree world until Big casually asks Carrie if she would like to get married, a question that leads to the usual luncheon postmortem (oh my gawd, he proposed) and then the usual rom-com clothing montage and a staggering number of product placements. (Louis Vuitton co-stars.)



Somehow it all goes lugubriously south. Carrie is let down Big Time, and she licks her wounds down Mexico way, accompanied by her amazingly accessible gal pals. Jokes about Montezuma’s revenge ensue (really), along with hard laughter and free-flowing tears and yet more clothes (and clothing montages) and jokes and jokes, most of them flatter than Carrie’s steely six-pack. Unlike the show, which allowed the men to emerge occasionally from the sidelines with lines of actual dialogue, the male characters in the movie stand idly by, either smiling or stripping, reduced to playing sock puppets in a Punch-free Judy and Judy (times two) show. I’m all for the female gaze, but, gee, it’s also nice to talk — and listen — to men, too.



I guess size does matter after all, if not in the way that the sex-addled Samantha might assume. On television and in tasty 30-minute bites, the show “Sex and the City” managed to entertain and sometimes even enthrall with self-consciously glib morality stories about love and desire in the modern world. Everything scaled nicely to television’s modest dimensions, from Ms. Parker’s Cubistic face to Patricia Field’s costumes. Kooky and at times insanely unflattering, the clothes caught your eye instantly, directing your attention to the itty-bitty figures, exactly what they were supposed to do. But those same loud outfits, mugging faces and picayune dramas just don’t translate when blown up on a movie screen, which makes all that small-screen stuff seem even punier.



There was something seductive about the bubble world that the show created back in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make it through the rough patches were good friends and throwdown heels. That was a beautiful lie, as the show acknowledged in its gently melancholic return in the wake of Sept. 11. Back in Season 3 Carrie asked, “Are we getting wiser, or just older?” The ideal, of course, is to do both. There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too. It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick.



“Sex and the City” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex in the city.



SEX AND THE CITY



Opens on Friday nationwide.



Written and directed by Michael Patrick King; director of photography, John Thomas; edited by Michael Berenbaum; music by Aaron Zigman; production designer, Jeremy Conway; produced by Mr. King, Sarah Jessica Parker, Darren Star and John Melfi; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 2 hours 22 minutes.



WITH: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), David Eigenberg (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry), Jason Lewis (Smith Jerrod), Lynn Cohen (Magda), Mario Cantone (Anthony Marentino), Willie Garson (Stanford Blatch), Jennifer Hudson (Louise), Candice Bergen (Enid Frick) and Chris Noth (Mr. Big).

film review: sex and city

film review: sex and city

by Will Pavia

There may be a problem with stretching Sex and the City into a two hour and twenty minute film - it can feel like a never ending dinner party: however pleasant the courses, after a while you can hardly eat another one.

None of these problems seemed apparent to the women who sat around me in the cinema in Leicester Square, laughing and weeping in quick succession. After a while I began to reason like one of the characters: maybe the problem was me.

Everyone else, being in possession of more than one X chromosome, seemed entirely satisfied by what they were served.

The dialogue was still sharp even if, to an audience now rather more used to women characters talking frankly about sex, it may no longer seem so daring.


There were still attempts to shock. Now they were talking about sex in front of a child, referring to the act euphemistically as “colouring”. How often did Miranda do colouring? Not nearly enough. Samantha, the goddess single of older women, of course liked to use all the crayons, while Carrie Bradshaw, our narrator and lead, said that when Big coloured “he doesn’t always stay inside the lines.”


Perhaps the child was needed to remind us that this was shocking, because since the series began, we have all become a lot more grown up.


If the atmosphere inside the cinema bordered on the devotional and the theatre was filled with the sounds of women emoting, outside the atmosphere was hysterical.



New Line, the studio behind the film, had attempted to pacify critics, curious as to why a film in which a major character is the city of New York, should open first in London.


The company claimed that the event would be “much smaller” than the New York premier, but all four women were there in their heels and dresses, and thousands had arrived to see them and scream their names.


Each in turn diplomatically affirmed their love of the city and denied or brushed aside rumours of tensions between the them during filming.


If none of the four actresses has enjoyed comparable success since the end of the series four years ago, the crowds cheered louder than they have for established film stars. Many felt they were welcoming back friends who had lived on their screens for six years and were returning for one last blast.


It was almost as if the director was feeling the nostalgia. The opening scenes are broken up with musical montages, softly lit like Hallmark adverts.

Carrie Bradshaw, (Sarah Jessica Parker), is finally to marry her Mr Big (Chris Noth). The news features in New York gossip columns, she is the forty-year-old bride featured in a wedding edition of Vogue.

The plot twists and turns like that of a pot boiler. Having inspired an entire genre of ‘chick lit’, Sex and the City the film feeds off its own progeny. Is it a film, one wonders, or an extended soap opera, will any of these crises be resolved and, if they are, will it matter, for they will surely soon plunge themselves into another dilemma, for which the only cure is an expansive shopping trip.

At the last, there is at least a brief concession to the meaner times in which we live now. And at the last, does Carrie finally marry her Mr Big? Well, dear reader, I can tell you that she...

A women’s institution
— Philip Treacy designed the hat worn for last night’s premiere by Sarah Jessica Parker. The eccentric British style icon Isabella Blow helped to make the Irish milliner a household name by stepping out in his outrageous designs for more than a decade
— Six seasons of the original television series of Sex and the City were produced on the HBO network between 1998 and 2004
— It won six Emmy awards and eight Golden Globes
— The final episode on Channel 4 in 2004 drew 4.1 million viewers
— The fifth series was cut to eight episodes after Parker and Cynthia Nixon became pregnant
— A black sequined Chanel dress with a price tag of $5,000 was among items of clothing from the series put up for sale in New York
— A channel in Shanghai produced its own version of the series in 2003 called Hot Ladies

film review: Osama

film review: Osama
Osama is a film in which the making of it is almost as exciting as the film itself. It was made in 2002, and shooting began about five months after the end of the war against the Taliban. Its director, Siddiq Barmak, has a history which is almost the history of Afghanistan in the past twenty years.

Barmak won a scholarship to study film in Moscow, during the Soviet occupation of his country. He returned to Afghanistan in 1987 and made some short films, and from l992 he has led Afghan filmmaking. His films have been about Afghan's political history; about occupation and wars.
When he finished studying in Russia he actually joined one of the Mudjahadeen groups fighting the Russians. He set up for them a centre for documentary and feature films because he said he wanted to create a cultural resource. 'Fighting and weapons do not make our future.'
There weren抰 actually many films made during the years of Taliban rule. Bharmak fled the Taliban and went North in l996 to make documentaries for one of the Northern Alliance Leaders, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

As far as I can discover there wasn't much cinema under the Taliban. But when the Taliban rule ended, Bharmak went straight back to Kabul and worked on a series of short docos; on things such as health and unexploded mines, which were shown around the country in mobile cinemas. Then he began Osama, which interestingly enough is a very beautifully-made and touching film about the oppression of women under the Taliban.

How the hell did he manage to find the resources to make a feature film so soon? Surely that sort of infrastructure had been destroyed? Well this is where the neighbours helped. The executive producer on this film is the internationally respected Iranian director and producer Mohsen Makmalbaf, who found the initial funds and provided most of the technical support. You may remember his extraordinary film Khandahar, which had the rain of crutches and prosthetic legs from the sky. He has also been working with Afghan refugees in Iran and this film couldn抰 have been made without him and his colleagues.

It抯 about a young girl, played by a thirteen-year-old street child called Marina Golbahari, who was actually living on the street when Bharmak found her.Under the Taliban women were not allowed to work. Her character抯 mother is a doctor, or nurse - skilled but forbidden. She is unable to support herself, her daughter and her mother so in desperation she cuts her daughter's hair and dresses her as a boy so she can work in the local bakery with a family friend.
The boy comes to be called Osama and the risk of this is truly terrible, and terrifying. Because those who break the Taliban religious rules are executed.

But the film becomes even more interesting...when the Taliban force young Osama to go to religious school for young boys, to train both in the Koran, and as a fighter.
I抦 not going to tell you if she is discovered because that would spoil the story, but this film has a truly disturbing ending.

The film looks elegant, as some of the best Iranian films can look. Barmak is a mature and experienced filmmaker, the story unfolds beautifully, with great expressiveness. Again, let me give you a couple of images. When the film opens, women in Kabul are demonstrating for the right to work and they are wearing those very hated, but I must say very beautiful, billowing blue bhurkas, these billowing blue images fill the screen.

And again, later, there抯 a scene in which we see into a crude harem one of the mullahs is keeping, of women assigned to him for forced marriage.

What one remembers are the locks: huge, extraordinary, hand-made, idiosyncratic locks. They are formally fascinating like small sculptures but they are also things of horror. Each woman has her very own and she is locked in at night, or chained, if she is disobedient.

The film is not all tough. There are moments of hope, humour, and friendship. It a wonderful film and one of the great scandals of this year Academy Awards was that it was not among the films nominated as Best Foreign Film, when some of the other nominations were mediocre. But we have a chance to see it now.

film review: Osama

90 minutes, Afghanistan/Ireland/Japan (2003), 12A
A girl masquerades as a boy to find work. The first film to be made in post-Taliban Afghanistan Siddiq Barmak's film is not - as its title might suggest - a documentary about the world's most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden, but a politically astute drama following a family of women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Left destitute by years of war and repression and without a single male relative to protect them from the misogynist policies of the local religious leaders, the family of 12-year-old Spandi (Golbarhari) resort to desperate measures to feed themselves.
Feature continues

Unable to work because they're women, Spandi's mother and grandmother hatch a plan to send their daughter out to work, cutting her hair short and dressing her in trousers so that she looks like a boy. Out on the ravaged streets of Kabul, though, Spandi's act becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as the Taliban round up all available male children for religious classes. Finding friendship in young Espandi (Herati) - the only boy who knows her secret - Spandi takes the name Osama in a desperate attempt to conceal her true identity.

As the first feature film to come out of the region, post 'War on Terror', Barmak's deliberately simple film is a downbeat, thought-provoking piece. While clearly indicting the regime's treatment of women, Barmack takes pains to interrogate the religious and social roots underlying the Taliban's misogyny. In a country that was left destitute after years of war and international neglect, women were turned into the last commodity to be bartered, beaten and sold like cattle. Far from celebrating the American liberation, Osama implicitly suggests that the wounds of contemporary Afghanistan will need more than bombs, bullets or even cinema in order to be healed. It's something that makes the film's opening quotation from Nelson Mandela - "I cannot forget but I can forgive" - seem more than a little optimistic.

Movie type: Drama MPAA rating: PG-13:for mature thematic elements Year of release: 2004 Run time: 82 minutes Directed by: Siddiq Barmak Cast: Arif Herati, Gol Rahman Ghorbandi, Marina Golbahari, Mohamad Haref Harati, Zubaida Sahar
Inspired by a true story, a tale which centers on three generations of women, deeply affected by the advent of the Taliban's rule in their land. Golbahari, a 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when this new regime closes the hospital where they work. As the Taliban has already begun to take over Afghanistan, the country's women find themselves forbidden to leave their houses without a 'legal companion'--specifically, a boy or a man. With both her husband and brother dead, there is no one left to support the family--and without being able to leave the house, this mother is left with nowhere to turn. Feeling that she has no other choice, the mother--along with the grandmother--disguises her daughter, Golbahari, as a boy. Now called Osama, the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity.

'Osama' a powerful look at living in fear By Ty Burr 02/20/2004

Some films you don't recommend to anyone looking for an easy time of it. Some films you recommend because they show what happened even as you wish you could look away. "Osama," the recent Golden Globe winner that opens today, is the first feature film to be made in post-Taliban Afghanistan, a country that, unlike neighboring Iran, never had much of a movie industry in the first place. It is based on a true story and stars an amateur cast who lived through much of what they're reenacting. The details are specific to Kabul during the five-year rule of the fundamentalist mullahs, but in its larger outlines this could have occurred (or be occurring) in any ideologically driven police state. Parallels to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and the Pol Pot regime -- even the civil rights-era South and "The Handmaid's Tale" -- are there for the taking. At bottom, however, "Osama" works simply as the story of one unlucky young girl.

We never do learn her real name. "Osama" is what the 12-year-old (played with pained clarity by Marina Golbahari) calls herself when she disguises herself as a boy, and the name references Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden only inasmuch as it stands to raise fewer suspicions. In any event, the girl doesn't have other options. Under Taliban rule, women are not allowed outside their houses without a male escort from their family -- the punishment is death by stoning -- but the girl's father and uncle have both been killed in the wars, and the hospital where her mother (Zubaida Sahar) worked has been closed. Cross-dressing is the only way Osama can feed her family.

As directed with poetic bluntness by Siddiq Barmak (who ran the Afghan Film organization before 1996, when the Taliban sent him fleeing to Pakistan; he returned to his homeland after the regime fell in early 2002), the film is anything but a profile in courage. The girl is at all times terrified of discovery, and even with her hair cropped short and her face hardened into an unconvincing glare the audience stays on edge, too. Taliban foot soldiers loom around every corner, their eyes aflame with zeal, their mouths dispensing obscenity-laden warnings to anyone not in lockstep with Allah. Because they see only what they want to see, they never quite see her.

It's a different matter with kids her own age. A wily street urchin named Espandi (Arif Herati) tries to extort a few pennies from Osama, but then becomes her protector when the Taliban start rounding up Afghani youth to provide Al Qaeda with fresh recruits. The girl is sent to a training camp in the mountains, where she has to get through a communal bathing ritual with an old goat of a mullah -- a scene that would be played for ribald comedy in a Hollywood film, it carries a helpless, free-falling danger here.

The movie regularly pulls back to give a wider view of a country prostrated by fanaticism. The opening sequence, in which a protest march led by women in blue burqas is dispersed by soldiers wielding rifles and firehoses, has a you-are-there immediacy, and you sense throughout that Barmak is committing his story to celluloid as quickly as possible, before memories fade. The fear that wracks the features of the young lead actress seems on loan from very recent events, while Ebrahim Gharfui's cinematography locates the threat in every smoky wasteland and quiet alleyway. The only thing he can't find is a place where a child can hide.

Movie review: 'Osama'By Mark CaroChicago Tribune Movie WriterFebruary 18, 2004

Email Print View Share Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Furl Google Reddit Spurl Yahoo Add To Favorites Add to playlist 3 stars (out of 4)

Siddiq Barmak's "Osama," billed as "the first entirely Afghan film shot since the rise and fall of the Taliban," derives most of its power from providing a clear window on a previously obscured world.

Like many films from nearby Iran, "Osama" gives the impression of being artless. It's shot with handheld cameras, uses nonprofessional actors, and feels more like real life accidentally witnessed than drama that has been written and staged.

At the film's center is a 12-year-old girl, played with great naturalness by newcomer Marina Golbahari, but "Osama" isn't about her as an individual so much as what happens to her - and how what happens is indicative of life in Afghanistan under the brutal, repressive Taliban regime.
The girl and her mother (Zubaida Sahar), their heads and bodies shrouded, work at a dilapidated, foreign-run hospital until a Taliban raid causes everyone to flee and the hospital to shut down. Under Taliban law, females cannot work or even venture from their homes without male accompaniment, and now, with the mother's husband and brother having been killed in Afghanistan's armed conflicts, the women are desperate.

So the mother decides to cut her daughter's hair and disguise her as a boy so she can be employed by a sympathetic grocer. The girl is in constant danger of discovery, though a fast-talking beggar boy named Espandi (Arif Herati) helps cover for her by telling people she's a boy named Osama.

You watch the movie with an ongoing feeling of dread, and it's not a feeling that ever dissipates. Barmak is putting faces to names here; we've heard about the Taliban's misogyny and oppressiveness, and now we're experiencing it.

We see Taliban enforcers batter protesters with clubs and water jets, snatch boys to attend training camps, and carry out capital punishment and stoning against foreign journalists and women for seemingly minor offenses. Some of the most horrific moments are the quietest ones, such as a Taliban elder demonstrating to the boys in camp how to perform one's ablutions in a deep water barrel. This image returns at the end in an unshakably haunting way.

In the beginning, Barmak seems to be playing some postmodern tricks as he shoots the action from the point of view of a cameraman whom Espandi is trying to hustle before the Taliban carries out the equivalent of a police riot. You initially wonder whether the cameraman, who gets arrested, is supposed to represent the filmmaker himself, though it becomes clear later on that he's an unrelated documentarian.

"Osama" retains primarily a documentary-like value as well. Aside from the unpredictable, open-hearted Espandi, the movie doesn't venture too deep into its characters.

The people are defined almost entirely by their usually dire situations, enabling you to project yourself more easily into their places. How can you not feel for a mother desperate to feed her family, a girl disguising her gender at the possible risk of death, women in general forced to cover up their beauty and the features that make them recognizably human?

The Taliban does not get ousted by the end of "Osama." Hope is something that must wait until after the credits have rolled.

film review: All About My Mother

film review: All About My Mother

Spain, 1999U.S. Release Date: 11/19/99 (limited), 12/25/99 (wider)Running Length: 1:45MPAA Classification: R (Sex, nudity, profanity, drug use)Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cast: Cecilia Roth, Eloy Azorín, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Rosa Maria Sardà, Toni CantóDirector: Pedro AlmodovarProducer: Agustín AlmodovarScreenplay: Pedro AlmodovarCinematography: Affonso BeatoMusic: Alberto IglesiasU.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures ClassicsIn Spanish with subtitles

The Pedro Almodovar of the late 1990s is not the same director who once engaged audiences with his kinky and offbeat views of sex and relationships. This new, kinder, gentler Almodovar is more concerned about conventional film elements like plot and character, and less determined to shock his viewers. The characteristics that once defined Almodovar films have become background aspects - still present, but not thrown into bas-relief. All About My Mother is the third consecutive movie in which Almodovar has applied this moderated style, proving even to doubters that the filmmaker has matured. After fumbling a little in The Flower of My Secret, Almodovar came back strong in 1997 with Live Flesh. His latest, All About My Mother, was the hit of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, where everyone except the jury thought it should have won the Palme D'Or. It proves to be Almodovar's most accomplished picture to date.

The difference between sensitive, emotionally true melodramas and manipulative tear-jerkers is not hard to define. It all comes down to two basic characteristics: believable characters and an intelligent script. Tripe like Stepmom and Patch Adams lack a measure of both. Powerful movies like All About My Mother possess those qualities in abundance. The storyline here is fresh and effectively paced, features a strongly realized protagonist, and traverses a few unexpected paths. Consequently, watching this film is a wholly satisfying experience.

The film opens in Madrid, where Esteban (Eloy Azorín) is about to celebrate his 17th birthday. On the cusp of adulthood, Esteban is blossoming into an accomplished writer, and he jots down in his journal that he wishes his mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth), would tell him the story of his father, whom he has never met. After Esteban makes his feelings known to her, Manuela promises to tell him, but tragedy strikes before she has an opportunity. While running after a taxi to get the autograph of a star he admires, Esteban is struck and killed by a car. A grieving Manuela then decides to travel from Madrid to Barcelona, where Esteban was conceived, to find her ex-husband and inform him that the son he never knew about is dead.

Arriving in Barcelona, Manuela runs into her old friend, Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a transvestite prostitute, who informs her that her former husband, who goes by the name of Lola, has vanished. Together, Manuela and Agrado visit Rosa (Penelope Cruz), the young nun who last saw Lola. However, although Rosa does not know Lola's current location, she is anxious to find him - while shepherding him through a drug detox program, Rosa became sexually involved with Lola, and she now carries his child. Meanwhile, Manuela takes time out of her schedule to visit a theater where a version of Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" is being produced, and, while there, she meets Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress whose autograph Esteban was pursuing when he was killed.

As the title implies, All About My Mother is about mothers and their relationships with their natural or surrogate children. It's also about the other roles that women occupy when they're not caring for their sons and daughters. There are no significant male characters in the film. Esteban dies early and Agardo, while born a male (and still possessing male genitalia), thinks and behaves like a woman. The absence of men allows Almodovar to explore interpersonal interaction without being concerned about testosterone interference. This results in a thoughtful and emotionally rich tapestry.

During the course of All About My Mother, Manuela is a mother three times over - first to her biological child, Esteban, then to Rosa, whom she takes into her home, and finally to a baby who comes into her custody. Unlike the other characters in this film, she does not hide behind a facade - she is a capable actress, but chooses not to pursue the profession. Instead, she decides to expend her time and effort caring for others. And Manuela is not the only mother in the film. Huma is a mother-figure to her much younger lover, Nina (Candela Peña), and Rosa is expecting a baby. All these women have nurturing sides and instincts, but none are as committed as Manuela. She is not actively looking to replace Esteban, but she finds a way to fill the void that his death has left.

On the surface, it might seem that Almodovar has dug into his usual rogues' gallery for some of All About My Mother's characters. After all, the film features a pregnant nun and a pair of half-men/half-women. However, instead of accentuating the bizarre characteristics of these individuals, Almodover concentrates on their humanity. They are not developed as caricatures; they are brought to life as people worth sympathizing with. Every relationship in this film, regardless of who the participants are, is built with care and consideration.

For his principals, the director has mined the best of Spain's talent. Penelope Cruz and Marisa Paredes, both veterans of Almodovar's past work, breathe life into their characters. Cruz, as usual, is extremely likable, and Paredes brings a mixture of toughness and world weariness to the part of Huma. There's a particularly poignant scene in which she recognizes that she may be successful, but that, after you've had success for a while, you no longer notice it. However, the centerpiece of All About My Mother is Cecilia Roth. Almodovar has used her several times before, but never has she been as vibrant as she is here.

From a visual standpoint, the film bears the director's trademark of bright colors arranged in interesting patterns. There are red dresses, yellow tabletops, orange shirts, etc. There are also a number of striking images, including that of a train racing through a tunnel and Manuela standing in front of a giant image of Huma's face. Thematically, Almodovar alludes to both "A Streetcar Named Desire" and All About Eve on multiple occasions. So, although All About My Mother can be viewed as an exquisitely constructed melodrama, for those who wish to dig deeper, there are other riches to uncover. For Almodovar, this picture represents the latest high point in a lively career. It is one of the best motion pictures that 1999 has to offer.
© 1999 James Berardinel

film review: All About My Mother by: Bill DeLapp

All About My Mother. (Sony Classics; 101 minutes; R; 1999). Dedicated to the cinema triumphs of actresses Bette Davis, Romy Schneider and Gena Rowlands, the new entry from Spanish director Pedro Almodovar (Live Flesh, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) fields his mostly female cast across a vast canvas of emotions. Manuela (Cecilia Roth), still reeling from the recent death of her teen-age son Esteban (Eloy Azorin), travels from her job as an organ transplant coordinator in a Madrid hospital to her old stomping grounds in Barcelona. Eighteen years earlier Manuela was a prostitute who became an unwed mother through her involvement with Lola (Toni Canto), cryptically described as "the worst of a man, and the worst of a woman."
Now Manuela is tracking down Lola to reveal the sad story of his unseen son, but a host of unexpected characters impede her search. They include Manuela's old pal Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a between-operations transvestite who offers the best of both worlds; the sad-faced Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), who helped Lola months earlier in a detox clinic; and bravura actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), who is playing Blanche Dubois in a stage production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire--and like her flamboyantly theatrical character, she also "relies on the kindness of strangers."

Almodovar achieves a kind of auteurist epiphany with this breakthrough work, which yokes his various directorial trademarks (hyperactive colors, grand melodrama, campy excesses) with a newfound sense of maturity to yield his best film to date. There's an exquisite cleverness to the early scenes, which show Manuela performing in videos that depict the value of organ transplants; not only does this foreshadow her very real dilemma involving her son, Manuela's interactions with the stoic on-screen doctors also showcase her acting talents, so that it's not much of a stretch to accept the idea that Manuela could eventually perform in Streetcar alongside Huma.

And without tipping off the many surprises in Mother, the film's fragmented sisterhood ultimately embraces a generous acceptance of the human condition. An undeniable highlight comes when Agrado takes the stage to reveal the price tags of her sexual conversion, then declares, "It cost me a lot to be authentic, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you dreamed you are." By turns sad, poignant and hilariously raunchy, All About My Mother is easily the year's finest art-house import.


film review: All About My Mother by Bill DeLapp

Once you get past the fact that this movie takes place in a very Pedro Almodovar world where soccer moms, flamboyant unemployed transvestites, aging stage divas and pregnant nuns all hang around together -- and even date each other -- "All About My Mother" emerges as the brassy Spanish director's most mature and intuitive work yet.

The story of the soccer mom's devastation and perseverance after seeing her 17-year-old son killed in a traffic accident, the film follows the distraught Manuela (Cecilia Roth) from Barcelona to Madrid in a therapeutic search for the boy's father -- now a transvestite -- who never knew he had a child.

In one of Almodovar's delicious twists of irony, as the movie begins Manuela is an organ transplant nurse, who is soon faced with the difficult decision to allow her son's body to be used for spare parts.

Unable to face her job again, she sets off on her quest, along the way seeking distractions from her pain by becoming the personal assistant to the stage diva (Marisa Paredes), practically adopting the pregnant -- and HIV-positive -- nun (Penelope Cruz), and catching up with a long-lost friend of the father, another surgically enhanced cross-dresser named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), who has hit on hard times and is prostituting her way from day to day.

As with all Almodovar movies, "All About My Mother" is as colorful (both literally and metaphorically) and whimsical as it is melancholy and vicarious. But compared his delightful pure comedies ("Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown") and so-so sexual melodramedies ("Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!") this film has a new level of emotional depth.

The writer-director continues to demonstrate a remarkable understanding of the female psyche and, as always, casts sublime actresses that lend his characters even more authenticity. Especially veritable is Roth, a beautiful woman that absolutely looks her age (about 40) but hasn't lost any youthful luster. She carries the film, playing Manuela's shattered motherhood with cogent, captivating sympathy.

While I was watching "All About My Mother," it seemed to be merely a good movie, blessed by strong performances and Almodovar's delectable quirkiness and bold photography. But as the credits rolled on the screen, I rolled the picture around in my head and started to warm to it even more. By the time I'd left the theater, I was in love and wanted to see it again.

I don't think I can explain how or why that happened, but it was a wonderful sensation.

film review: All About My Mother

Rapturously received when premiered at Cannes earlier this year, Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother is a moving melodrama with plenty of charm and humour. While not all of the latter is intentional, some of it is truly inspired, and All About My Mother will doubtless delight Almodovar fans. Whether it will win over the sceptics remains to be seen.
Manuela (Cecilia Roth) and her teenage son Esteban live alone in Madrid, united by a special single mother-son bond. Esteban is naturally inquisitive about his father who, he has been told by his mother, died before he was born. On her son's seventeenth birthday, after a theatre trip to see A Streetcar Named Desire, Manuela prepares to tell him the difficult truth. But before she has the chance, Esteban is killed in a car accident while seeking the autograph of Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress playing Blanche DuBois in the production they have just seen. A transplant co-ordinator by profession, Manuela signs over Esteban's heart so that, in some way, he continues to live on. But finding it impossible to recover from her son's death, she makes a journey to Barcelona to locate her son's father and inform him of Esteban's life and death.

At this point the plot begins to falter and, entering familiar Almodovar territory, spins out of control. Manuela, it transpires, once lead an extraordinary existence in Barcelona. Meeting up once more with her best friend - a transsexual prostitute called La Agrada (Antonia San Juan) - together they befriend the actress Huma Roja and a beautiful nun, Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz). And Manuela searches for her ex, once also called Esteban - until he became Lola.

There is a powerful story in here somewhere, if only the editor had cut more vigorously, and Almodovar kept a check on an artistry and imagination which force the story beyond belief. Roth is dynamic, but not even she cannot pull off some truly terrible lines and the farcical scene in which she and the garishly made-up Lola share their grief over their dead son. It is Agrada - sassy, witty and unstoppable - who steals the show.

film review: All About My Mother

Kevin Spacey’s reign at the Old Vic has not been universally successful, and I was dubious as to the merits of adaptation of a tricky Almodovar film. Firstly, how could the Spanish-ness of the film, All About My Mother, be captured on the most venerable of British stages? Secondly, how could such a visually arresting and cinematic entity be transferred to the stage at all? Most importantly though, what would a stage adaptation of a beloved and lauded film bring to the piece, was it just a cynical ploy to deliver a product that the audience would already be familiar with?
All these points were answered in the negative by Tom Cairns’s production, and Samuel Adamson’s fine version of the story. The cast are also generally top rate, with Lesley Manville leading the company as the grieving mother Manuela, searching for the long estranged (and transsexual) father of her recently deceased teenage son, but also drawn to the celebrated actress who played a key role in his death (he crossed the road in order to get an autograph, and was hit by a car, unknown to the her). The Spanish flavour is retained, but given a British bent, perhaps the emotions are slightly more restrained than in the excellent film. The plot of the film has been closely followed, but with several adaptations necessary due to the nature of the stage versus screen, and Adamson gives us a perfectly natural British vocabulary (and the cast a range of accents). As for the point of the stage version, it is simply that this is a great story, told with pathos and skill by the actors, that works well onstage. No other justification is needed, but this is an artistic endeavour, not a cynical reproduction like some other plays and especially musicals that I could mention.

The story involves Manuela leaving Madrid for Barcelona where she looks for her ex husband (the junkie transsexual) and meets up with an old friend, Agrado, a transsexual prostitute (beautifully played with comic gusto, but also great emotional intelligence towards the end by Mark Gatiss, proving him to be a worthy stage actor and a great fabricator of the Welsh accent). Through Agrado, Manuela meets an outreach worker, a nun, Sister Rosa, who she eventually takes in and cares for (due to illness and an un nun like pregnancy), unable to repress her maternal instinct. She also becomes involved with Huma Rojo, a famous actress, played by Dame Dina Rigg. Rigg plays the tough but nice lesbian actress well; it almost like no acting is taking place, just Rigg being a slightly grand but likeable actor.

The second act is where the play really came together for me, I enjoyed the first act, but knowing the story well it felt slightly flat at times (simply through familiarity). In the second act, when characters and situations are all already established and allowed to grow, the emotional heart became clear. The perseverance of these women, despite deaths and diseases, the fact that life will endure even with sorrow. The strength of women, their crucial role in creating and running society, is the overarching theme. There are a couple of interesting features that the play delivers differently than on screen. Here we have Manuela’s son, Esteban (excellent Colin Morgan, so wonderful in Vernon God Little down the road at the Young Vic recently), appearing several times during the course of the play (after his early death), to speak to characters or sometimes directly to the audience. This underscores the point of the, not only the title, but the underlying grief and loss that drives Manuela. Also, when Agrado announces the cancellation of a performance A Streetcar Names Desire (the play that Huma is starring in), it’s a direct announcement to a real audience, not a fake on screen audience. In fact Agrado makes the announcement twice, one more flat and monotone and the second revealing the real emotions of the evening. Agroado then begins to entertain the audience with tales of his/her life. I think that the immediacy and personal nature of the performance here is far more powerful than the same moment on film.

The set by Hildegard Bechtler is an impressive entity, mostly comprising of atmospheric 1960’s style wallpaper. But it also includes spinning walls and a stage within a stage at one point. The production flows very well, despite several changes of atmosphere and pace, that in less deftly directed shows would creak. All About My Mother is also a film that was all about the theatre in a way, certainly about acting in general, so by the end I concluded that it was the perfect choice for a stage adaptation. Cairns, Adamson (and Almodovar), and their first rate cast have created a very enjoyable, even moving, evening out.

Best Line on the London stage so far this year: Nina an actress, to Manuela about Huma, her lover (aka Dame Dina Rigg): ‘She’s always looking for fresh muff’.