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 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
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’.
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