A Wonderful Film on the World of Women

Instituto Cervantes and Greenbelt 1 is currently having a Spanish Film Festival, which ends on October 16. Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) is one of the featured films in the festival, and below is an edited version of my review of it, which was published in the December 1, 2003 issue of The Philippine Graphic. As of this writing, the movie will be screened at Cinema 2 on the following playdates: Oct. 5 and 8 at 5:30 p.m.; Oct. 13 at 8 p.m.; and Oct. 16 at 3 p.m. If you’re open-minded enough, do watch it.


THE AUTEUR AND HIS ACTRESSES: (foreground) Pedro Almodóvar; (middle row, left to right) Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, and Cecilia Roth; (back row, left to right) Candela Peña, Rosa Maria Sardà, and Antonia San Juan. (Copyright © 1999 by Yahoo! Movies)

Title: All About My Mother (1999). Director/Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar. Starring: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, Antonia San Juan, Candela Peña, Rosa Maria Sardà, and Eloy Azorin. Award: 1999 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film. Rating: R for sexuality including strong sexual dialogue, language and some drug content.

FIRST, LET'S START with the plain and simple truth: one can’t talk about contemporary Spanish cinema without mentioning Pedro Almodóvar; and one can’t talk about this flamboyant filmmaker without discussing how his personality and his vision of the world inform his works. A genuine auteur, his comic sensibility and over-the-top ideas shine through in farces and melodramas like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and The Flower of My Secret. But in his celebrated All About My Mother, one would see a certain depth and maturity missing from his earlier movies. In other words, he has evolved.

When 18-year-old Esteban (Eloy Azorin) dies in a car accident without ever learning who his father is, his mother, a nurse named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) leaves Madrid and returns to Barcelo­na, compelled by his memory to find his father and tell him that they had a son together. Unfortunately, not only does it turn out he is nowhere in sight, it also turns out that he is now a trans­vestite named Lola. Plus, it seems he did some people wrong before leaving.

In the meantime, Manuela reunites with an old friend, another transvestite named Agrado (Antonia San Juan) and meets new ones: Huma (Marisa Paredes), a stage diva who is involved with Nina (Candela Peña), her drug-addicted co-star; and a pregnant, HIV-positive nun named Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz) and her harassed mother (Rosa Maria Sardà). For the next several months Manuela cares for, encourages and supports them through their most trying times. Still, Esteban is very much in her thoughts, and so’s her desire to search for his father.

One could tell from the far-fetched plot that Almodóvar remains fascinated with characters fin­ding themselves in outrageous situations (A transvestite for a father? A nun who’s HIV-positive and pregnant at the same time?). In lesser hands, All About My Mother could easily turn into a campy farce or a clichéd melodrama; but in Almodóvar’s, it achieves the level of art. Unlike in his earlier movies, he masterfully directs All About My Mother in a serious and straight-faced tone, and maintains it throughout despite the material. The result is astonishing: it persuades the viewer to unquestioningly accept the film’s premises. That’s hard to do.

As a screenwriter, it’s clear that Almodóvar has great affection for his characters, flawed as they are. In them he explores the different images of women, in the different roles they play: as wife, mother and daughter; as nurturing caregiver and uncaring junkie; as nun and prostitute; as actress and transvestite. The fact that the film incorporates All About Eve (a sharp, witty film a­bout the New York theater scene) and the play A Streetcar Named Desire (which features two of modern theater’s most memorable female characters) into the plot is not just a simple tribute, but rather reinforces this idea of women playing roles, both onstage and off.

But more than that, Almodóvar also explores the complicated and dynamic bond these women share with one another, and he does so with depth and humor. A superb cast beautifully brings these women and this bond to life. As the grieving Manuela, Argentine-born Roth gives a poig­n­ant performance. One could not help but feel for her when her colleagues inform her that Este­ban couldn’t be saved, or be touched when she follows his heart to another city, now transplan­ted in another, older man. No doubt about it, she’s the heart and soul of the film.

The rest of the cast give Roth some splendid support, with Paredes projecting panache and vulnerability as the needy Huma and Cruz, who captured Hollywood’s eye with this movie, radia­t­ing grace and loveliness as Sister Rosa. But to me the standout supporting performance belongs to San Juan, and I think it’s partly because of her role. However easy or hard it is to play a trans­vestite hooker-turned-assistant, I don’t know. But in any case she’s sensational.

Even now, many consider All About My Mother as one of Almodóvar’s most important films for several reasons. It shows Almodóvar’s great affection for women at its peak. It presents, not just an older Almodóvar, but also a more mature, reflective and serious one. And as this film and his follow-up effort, the brilliant Talk to Her have shown, it promises that the best is yet to come from this Spanish auteur. Now that’s really something to look forward to. (Copyright © 2003 by A.I.D.)