All About My Mother

The plot originates in Almodóvar's earlier film The Flower of My Secret which shows student doctors being trained in how to persuade grieving relatives to allow organs to be used for transplant, focusing on the mother of a teenager killed in a road accident.

Plot

On his seventeenth birthday, Esteban is hit by a car and killed while chasing after actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes) for her autograph following a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which she portrays Blanche DuBois. Manuela has to agree with her colleagues at work that her son's heart be transplanted to a man in A Coruña. After traveling after her son's heart, Manuela quits her job and journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son's father, Lola (Toni Cantó), a transvestite she kept secret from her son, just as she never told Lola they had a son.

In Barcelona, Manuela reunites with her old friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a warm and witty transsexual prostitute. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with several characters: Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young nun who works in a shelter for battered prostitutes and is pregnant by Lola; Rosa's mother (Rosa Maria Sardà); Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired; and the drug-addicted Nina Cruz (Candela Peña), Huma's co-star and lover. Her life becomes entwined with theirs as she cares for Rosa during her pregnancy and works for Huma as her personal assistant and even acts in the play as an understudy for Nina during one of her drug abuse crises.

On her way to the hospital, Rosa asks the taxi to stop at a park where she spots her father's dog, Sapic, and then her own father (Fernando Fermán Gómez), who suffers from Alzheimer's; he does not recognize Rosa and asks for her age and height, but Sapic is cleverer and knows Rosa. Rosa dies giving birth to her son, and Lola and Manuela finally reunite at Rosa's funeral. Lola (whose name used to be Esteban), who is dying from AIDS, talks about how she always wanted a son, and Manuela tells her about her own Esteban and how he died in a car accident. Manuela then adopts Esteban, Rosa's child, and stays with him at Rosa's parents' house. The father does not understand who Manuela is, and Rosa's mother says it's the new cook, who is living here with her son. Rosa's father then asks Manuela her age and height.

Manuela introduces Esteban (Rosa's son) to Lola and gives her a picture of their own Esteban. Rosa's mother spots them from the street and then confronts Manuela about letting strangers see the baby. Manuela tells her that Lola is Esteban's father; Rosa's mother is appalled and says: "That is the monster that killed my daughter?!"

Manuela flees back to Madrid with Esteban; she cannot take living at Rosa's house any longer, since the grandmother is afraid that she will contract AIDS from the baby. She writes a letter to Huma and Agrado saying that she is leaving and once again is sorry for not saying goodbye, like she did years before. Two years later, Manuela returns with Esteban to an AIDS convention, telling Huma and Agrado, who now run a stage show together, that Esteban had been a miracle by not inheriting the virus. She then says she is returning to stay with Esteban's grandparents. When asking Huma about Nina, she becomes melancholy and leaves. Agrado tells Manuela that Nina went back to her town, got married, and had a baby.

Almodóvar dedicates his film "To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother."

Almodovar recreates the accident scene from John Cassavetes's Opening Night as the epicenter of the dramatic conflict.

Cast

Production

The soundtrack includes "Gorrión" and "Coral para mi pequeño y lejano pueblo," written by Dino Saluzzi and performed by Saluzzi, Marc Johnson, and José Saluzzi, and "Tajabone," written and performed by Ismaël Lô.

Release

Critical reception in the United States

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed, "You don't know where to position yourself while you're watching a film like All About My Mother, and that's part of the appeal: Do you take it seriously, like the characters do, or do you notice the bright colors and flashy art decoration, the cheerful homages to Tennessee Williams and All About Eve, and see it as a parody? . . . Almodovar's earlier films sometimes seemed to be manipulating the characters as an exercise. Here the plot does handstands in its eagerness to use coincidence, surprise and melodrama. But the characters have a weight and reality, as if Almodovar has finally taken pity on them - has seen that although their plights may seem ludicrous, they are real enough to hurt."

Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "No one else makes movies like this Spanish director" and added, "In other hands, these characters might be candidates for confessions - and brawls - on The Jerry Springer Show, but here they are handled with utmost sympathy. None of these goings-on is presented as sordid or seedy. The presentation is as bright, glossy and seductive as a fashion magazine . . . The tone of All About My Mother has the heart-on-the-sleeve emotions of soap opera, but it is completely sincere and by no means camp."

Wesley Morris of the San Francisco Examiner called the film "a romantically labyrinthine tribute that piles layers of inter-textual shout-outs to All About Eve, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Federico García Lorca and Alfred Hitchcock, and beautifully assesses the nature of facades . . . Almodovar imbues his Harlequin-novel-meets-Marvel-comic-book melodramas with something more than a wink and a smile, and it is beguiling. His expressionism and his screenwriting have always had fun together, but now there is a kind of faith and spirituality that sexcapades like Law of Desire and Kika only laughed at . . . [I]t contains a host of superlative firsts: a handful of the only truly moving scenes he is filmed, the most gorgeous dialogue he is composed, his most dimensional performances of his most dimensional characters and perhaps his most dynamic photography and elaborate production design."

Jonathan Holland of Variety called the film "emotionally satisfying and brilliantly played" and commented, "The emotional tone is predominantly dark and confrontational . . . But thanks to a sweetly paced and genuinely witty script, pic doesn't become depressing as it focuses on the characters' stoic resilience and good humor."

Selected awards and nominations

''' BAFTA Awards

''' Golden Globe Awards

''' Goya Awards

References

External links

Category:1999 films Category:1990s drama films Category:Spanish drama films Category:Spanish LGBT-related films Category:French drama films Category:French LGBT-related films Category:Spanish-language films Category:Catalan-language films Category:English-language films Category:Films directed by Pedro Almodóvar Category:HIV/AIDS in film and television Category:Best Film Goya Award winners Category:Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners Category:Feminist films Category:Films set in Barcelona Category:Films set in Madrid Category:Films shot in Barcelona Category:Films shot in Madrid Category:Transgender in film and television Category:Sony Pictures Classics films