Customer Reviews

All About My Mother

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Todo Sobre Mi Madre," or "All About My Mother," revolves around the life of an organ transplant coordinator, Manuela, who was briefly shown in one of Almodovar's most recent movie "The Flower of My Secret". After the death of her only child, Manuela sets off from Madrid to Barcelona to find both his father and the traveling troupe who performs "A Streetcar Named Desire," throughout Spain.

Argentinian actress Cecilia Roth is both excellent and convincing as Manuela. Her performance for an actress not from Spain is original, since most of Almodovar's leading startlets are Spaniards. Marisa Paredes as Huma, a fading starlet, reminded me of her performance in "High Heels," wher she played a similar character. However the two emerging standouts in this film are Antonia San Juan as Manuela's drag-queen friend (fact: although she looks like a man, San Juan is actually a woman) and the beautiful Penelope Cruz, who plays a HIV-positive pregnant nun (only Almodovar can bring us such characters). Cruz, who radiates natural beauty and style has become Spain hottest export to Hollywood since Antonio Banderas. Keep an eye out for her in the near future.

The visual arrangement of colors, patterns, and clothes brings the film so much beauty it is unbearable not to watch and adore it. Almodovar's camera illusions, especially watching a grieving Manuela run to her injured son, Esteban, after he is struck by a car (the camera looks like if the victim is watching his mother run in the rain) and the trick of watching Esteban write in his journal (we see his pencil move through a glass that is supposed to be his pad) is amazing. Only the pure genius that Almodovar is could have thought of this.

This happens to be Almdovar's best film in the past 10 years. Truly, if you are an artist, an admirer of Spanish culture, or just love art films, then this film will fascinate you. A true gem in the evolution of Spanish cinema.

"All About My Mother" is simply divine. The story of a woman going in search of her ex-husband, also father of her son and meeting a group of neurotic women on the way only to act as a mother figure to all of them--is stunning.

Cecilia Roth's performance as the lead, Manuela, is driven, passionate, and raw. Penelope Cruz's troubled nun Rosa is young, sweet, and hopeful, even in the midst of complete despair. As Huma Rojo, Marisa Paredes gives a first-class performance as a Dramatic Diva whose love for her ruthless costar Nina (who is "hooked on junk") motivates all of her dying emotions. And Antonia San Juan offers both comic relief and some self-esteem lessons to us all as the lovable transvestite La Agrado. And Manuela's doomed son, Esteban (the performer's name escpaes me) gives a gut wrenching, beautiful portrayal of the dreamer inside of all us.

As for Almodovar's work--how visually stunning the cinematography is--obviously orchestrated to pull out every ounce of color, the dominant red and blue hues in the film set a tone of sadness, fury, passion, and distress.

By the end of this film, there is so much to be said in terms of its themes and references to such classic films/theatrical shows such as "All About Eve," an obvious sketch for the theatrical life in the show, and "A Streetcar Named Desire" is an outlet in many ways for all of the characters--but there are so many routes to take in analyzing this film...it is full of love, hate, loss, motherhood, and friendship. Definitely recommended to all of you out there who have feelings.

A director has reached the top of his profession when he is referred to by one name alone (Ex: Spielberg, Coppola, and Scorcesse). Pedro Almodovar has reached that point in his career and his latest film, All About My Mother, has secured his place among the greatest directors of his generation; not only in his native Spain but also all over the world.

A splendid cast headed by Argentinean actress Cecilia Roth, legendary Spanish actress Marissa Paredes and younger stars Penelope Cruz and Candela Peña turns this film into the meeting of two era's of the Spanish cinema.

Manuela, a single young mother (Cecilia Roth) loses her son to an auto accident after seeing a production of A Street Car Named Desire starring Huma Rojo (Marissa Paredes) on his birthday.

Destroyed by the death of her son, Manuela travels from Madrid to Barcelona to find the boy's father and tell him that when she left him nearly two decades before she was pregnant with his child who was now dead.

Upon arriving in Barcelona, Manuela accidentally reunites with La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a transsexual friend who she left behind when she fled from Barcelona so many years ago. La Agrado in turn introduces her to Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a nun who becomes very close to Manuela. When Sister Rosa is taken ill it is Manuela who cares for her, and becomes somewhat her surrogate mother while still trying to deal with the loss of her own son.

While in Barcelona she goes to see A Streetcar Named Desire starring Huma Rojo, the actress who had left her son so impressed when they saw it Madrid. One thing leads to another and Manuela starts working as Huma's personal assistant, trying to keep her life in order and trying to keep Nina (Huma's Lesbian heroine addict lover) under control.

Add to the pot the birth of a baby, a funeral, AIDS, and a dear old man with Alzheimer's and you have one of the greatest Spanish language films ever made, portraying subjects that only American Directors like Quentin Tarantino may be brave enough to tackle.

The most Humorous scenes involve the transsexual La Agrado as she recalls her days of prostitution and the expenses of her cosmetic surgery.

Cecilia Roth's performance as Manuela is extraordinary and Penelope Cruz's portrayal of Sister Rosa makes it obvious as to why Vanity Fair chose her as one of the hottest youngest actresses of her generation.

I would be remiss and an out right idiot if I did not mention Marissa Paredes as Huma Rojo. Paredes is not a classic beauty but has the legendary quality and glamour that made Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Crawford stars. When on the screen she steals the show.

Fans of Almodovar will be elated by his latest offering. I recommend the film if only for the scenery of Barcelona. Offering the best mix of Drama and Comedy, Almodovar has out done himself once again. It is easy to see why the film received Best film at The Cannes Film Festival as well as The Academy Award's Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Also by Almodovar I recommend High Heels (also with Marissa Paredes) and Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown.

Cecilia Roth shines as a woman whose only son is cut down in the prime of life while she watched helplessly. After his death, she commits to finding his father, and so begins a telling search for the truth that is at once tinged with sadness and yet filled with wondeful spirit and light. Aldomovar is a genius of perception, and this film - rightfully an Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Language Film - ranks up there with his own "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" as one of the best films to ever come from Spain (or any foreign country for that matter.) Funny, fast, furious and frightening at once, the tale is spun through Roth's point of view - that of a heartbroken mother who finds redemption via a cast of unseeming characters who both ooze humanity and pathos. A brilliant film, not to be missed!

Pedro Almodovar shocked me w/ this release. The man famous for bright-colored farcical fare has turned over a new leaf and launched himself straight into TRUE DRAMA. Hot Brazilian momma Cecilia Roth evokes enough emotional overload (followed by restraint) to keep our interest throughout. Almodovar doesn't leave his past antics behind completely (read: transvestites, homosexuals, drug addicts, &c). However, beyond the anomolies, the actors in this film deliver full-bodied characters, and we draw ourselves closer to them, hoping their lives will turn out for the better. Beautiful camera work. Great script. Terrific acting. Mondo director. Eat your heart out, "American Beauty." THIS film deserved Best Picture...

Another excellent masterpiece by the one an only Almodovar, this film is quite darker than his previous movies. However, the twisted plot is there as always, as well as the unexpected ending and wonderful acting. Cecilia Roth does a great performance as the dramatic Manuela, who loses her only son to a car accident while chasing after the theater star "Huma Rojo", played by Marisa Paredes, whose glamour and beauty make her ideal for this role. However, the real star is Antonia San Juan, who literally steals the show whenever she is on screen. Her character lightens up the somewhat sad story with her witty remarks and "perverse" naivete. Also Penelope Cruz makes a great performance of "Rosa", a nun who gets pregnant by another prostitute who happens to also be the father of Manuela's child. However, the fact of her wanting to travel to El Salvador to help in the war is quite inaccurate, as the war in that country has been over for ten years now, unless the story was supposed to take place in the 80's but who knows, they never clarify that. Overall, it's a great movie and a "must see", not suitable for the closed minded, though.

It is a complicated film about complicated women, trying to capture, I think, the dynamics of women in general. I think it seeks to answer 'what a woman is' by exploring their relationships with each other, their deepest loves, and purpose in life. Maybe I am just looking at the surface, maybe I am missing the whole boat but it seems that way to me.

I think it would be incredibly difficult to improve this film.

absolutely cool, deeply satisfying, fun, intense.

What I like most about Almodovar's films, this one in particular, is the way he will grab you and pull you into a world you would not normally know and then, confront you with people's lives, emotions, and relationships. Cecilia Roth (Manuela), the mother who at the beginning seems so in control and clinical, earnest in her love and with the best intentions for her son, is shown to be much like you and me... full of doubts, questions, a need for answers and trying to understand how her life course has brought her to the present day and made her who she is.

Cecilia Roth is an Almodovar favorite, and there's no mystery as to why this is the case. She can express tragedy, wisdom, and an appreciation of dark humor only with her eyes and facial positioning, and express all three vividly at the same time. Her voice also is as commanding of respect as it is sexy and fragile. The film is a deep drama, studying carefully the female universe with strength and realism, and also explaining the importance of a mother. All the main characters are very well developed and each of them has some importance in the plot. It's really amazing how Almod?var knows women so well, and how he loves and cares about them. His film is a very complex masterpiece, with some important messages and a wonderful story, and should be seen by everyone, even for those who don't like subtitles. The dialogues are fabulous!

Barcelona in winter is richly filmed and serves as a backdrop for the renewing of old satisfying friendships and the budding of new ones, happening simultaneously and somewhat unexpectedly. Almodovar eye for visual poems of incongruity reaches a new pinnacle in this masterpiece. First, there is the haunting by-play of darkness and light preceding Roth coming to the rescue of El Agreado. Much later, we are treated to the brightness of the upscale restaurant where Roth waits for her ex-husband Lola juxtaposed with a merciless exploration of the vast dark despair of Lola's eyes. Between these bookend-style frames, the profound dualities abound.

If you see one foreign language film per year, make this one your next.

This is my first experience with a film directed by the acclaimed Spanish film maker, Pedro Almodóvar. It is very complex on both a technical and emotional level.

It is first and foremost a kind of absurdist parody of contemporary life with Almodóvar simultaneously questioning bourgeois values and celebrating the community of those with alternative life styles. He makes the burghers in the audience feel uneasy in their assumptions, especially about questions of gender and about the lifestyle of cross-dressers and gender-unspecific/variable people, who, he wants us to know, live and breath and love and hate just like anybody else.

Cecile Roth stars as Manuela, who is a nurse at a hospital in Madrid where she helps to coordinate the organ donor programs. She is also an amateur actress who plays in the simulations that the hospital makes to educate staff and patients. Her 17-year-old son with whom she is very close tells her she is a great actress, but Manuela is modest. She is also secretive about his father's identity. After seeing a production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, the son and the mother await outside the stage door so that he can get an autograph from the actress who plays Blanche Dubois, Marisa Paredes, who is named Huma Rojo in the film. Tragedy ensues as the son is hit and fatally injured. In just one of a number of plot mixings that emphasize the sometimes tragic and often ironic nature of the human experience, the son becomes an organ donor before he dies, and Manuela, who had previously arranged for organ donations, now has to sign the papers to donate the organs of her beloved son.

Now she goes to Barcelona to look up the father, who had once played the crude and boorish Stanley Kowalski to her Stella, again from A Streetcar Named Desire. In Barcelona Manuela again sees the play, but this time meets the star, Huma, who is a grande old dame of the Spanish theater, a Lesbian genius who has taken her theatrical cue in life from Bette Davis (and her smoking habits as well). In a salute to Davis and a remembrance of one of her greatest roles, we see posters of Bette Davis from the classic Hollywood film, All About Eve (1950), and then a kind of take off on the action as Manuela becomes in a sense Eve Harrington as she befriends Huma and begins working for her. (Waiting outside the stage door for a autograph is also a scene from All About Eve.) Nina (Candela Peña) Huma's heroin-addicted lover becomes jealous and accuses Manuela of seeking Huma's friendship just so she can become a star herself, a la Eve Harrington. To top it off Manuela is called upon to play Stella when Nina cannot because of an overdose, and miraculously she relives her role from twenty years before, and does a great job, because she is, as her son knew, a gifted actress.

Okay, we can see the complexities. I have merely given the premise of the film. Enter now Antonia San Juan as Agrado, an old friend of Manuela's who is a professional transvestite. (San Juan is brilliant in the part as a woman playing a man playing a woman.) Enter also Penélope Cruz as a pregnant nun with AIDs. What evolves is a kind of sisterhood among variously gendered females. There is also a sense of a middle class, soap opera-ish even, action and resolution, but with Almodóvar's tongue firmly in cheek.

Men, however, do not come off very well in this film. The grandfather-to-be apparently has Alzheimer's and does not even recognize his daughter. Manuela's son is dead. A theater male is depicted as a kind of stagehand Stanley Kowalski, boorishly insensitive, seeking only his own pleasure; indeed Tennessee Williams's crude, animalistic Kowalski appears as a metaphor for men in this film. Manuela is his long-suffering Stella, and Huma has always, as she actually says, depended on the kindness of strangers. Finally, there is "Lola" a tall, handsome, gender-modified Kowalski, played inadequately by Toni Cantó, in what may be a bit of purposely bad casting for effect by Almodóvar--or perhaps I should say, played shallowly and unconvincingly on purpose by Toni Cantó. It's hard to tell. Indeed part of Almodóvar's technique is a blurring of distinctions with ironic parallels, showing how some things are the same, but different depending on your point of view, the organ donors, Lola's fatherhood, Manuela as Stella and/or Eve, etc.

Bottom line this is an unsettling film, brilliantly acted by Paredes, Roth and San Juan, and cleverly directed in a most original style by Almodóvar. It will not play well with Disney aficionados or with devotees of action cinema--and put the kiddies to bed, please.

I was genuinely touched by this beautiful film by Almodovar. I would highly recommend it, though it is a tale of loss and grief and the way we recover from grief by moving out of ourselves and back into the world.

Manuela is a organ transplant nurse who matches organ donors to recipients in Madrid. Manuela has also performed in medical education films, showing physicians how to ask greif stricken relatives if they are willing to give up the organs of their deceased loved ones so that they might be used by others. Her beautiful fine son, Esteban, will soon have his 18th birthday and we see Esteban writing entries into his journal which he calls "all about my mother". Manuela takes Esteban to see his favorite actress Huma Rojo play Blanche DuBois in Street Car Named Desire. He is struck by an automobile and dies in the emergency room in the hospital where Manuela works. Manuela's physician colleagues must now ask her for her son's organs so that others might live. The acting is so superb and realistic that I found this film to be almost unbearable at this point. Before his death, Esteban asked his mother to tell him about his father, which she never did. Now she leaves Madrid and returns to Barcelona to find her former lover and tell him about the son he does not know he had. Manuela goes to Barcelona and connects with Huma Rojo, the aging lesbian diva, and becomes her assistant. Huma's life is a mess due to her stormy relationship with her junkie lover. Manuela's kindness and calm organizational skills help her bring order to Huma's life. The fact that Manuela comes out of nowhere to come to Huma's aide reminded me of the Blanche DuBois line: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. The parallel to All About Eve is also recognizable as Manuela eventually must take to the stage to play Stella when an actress fails to appear at curtain time.

Manuela becomes the helper and emotional support for Sister Rosa, an HIV positive pregnant nun. Rosa has been impregnated by the same man as Manuela 19 years earlier. Manuela cares for Rosa even as Rosa is rejected by her upper-class mother. Rosa tragically dies in childbirth leaving Manuela with a new baby boy.

Manuela tracks down her former lover and finds that he is now a transexual HIV positive drug addicted prostitute. Lola (his new name) and Manuela grieve the loss of Esteban; he grieves the son he never knew while she begins to move out of her grief into a state of compassion. Manuela, in her support for Lola, is showing that she is moving out of her grief through the love and care of others. She moves out of personal grief and into compassion for the world of sadness all around her.

Almodovar develops outlandish characters; lesbian divas, pregnant nuns, and transgendered playboys. Yet they are played with such warmth and empathy that they become real. Manuela plays the archtypal mother, loving, caring, supporting, suffering, grieving, and sympathetic.

Even though this film broke my heart, it is profoundly sad, it also was so beautifully compassionate to all the humans in the story. Manuela must move from incredible grief (the loss of an only son) toward God's view of the world and human suffering so as to move beyond her own pain and suffering. Only a mature and brilliant film maker could produce such a fine film as this. The subtle and sublime are lovingly combined with the outlandish and absurd.