# Todo sobre mi madre (1999)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Sony Pictures Classics
     Director: Pedro Almodovar
     Writer:   Pedro Almovovar
     Cast: Cecilia Roth, Eloy Azorin, Marisa Paredes, Penelope
    Cruz, Candela Pena, Antonia San Juan, Rosa Maria Sarda,
    Toni Canto

In James L. Brooks's comedy "As Good As It Gets," when a receptionist asks celebrated novelist Melvin Udall how he writes women so authentically, he replies, "I think of a man. Then I take away reason." By contrast, Pedro Almodovar bears no malice toward the female sex. His latest film, which won him the best director prize at the last Cannes Film Festival, is billed as a homage to all women and to all people who want to be women. While Almodovar--perhaps Spain's greatest director since Luis Bunuel--breaks with his past custom of portraying off-the-wall characters against surreal settings, he retains an affection for unusual people. In "All About My Mother," a moving, sometimes melodramatic meditation upon a group of women who become good friends and support one another through their heartaches and troubles, the prolific forty-eight year old regisseur creates a somewhat autobiographical picture across a boldly-colored canvas. In a movie flawed only by an unusual number of coincidences, he focuses on a nurse whose tragedies began when her husband ran away from their Madrid home to Barcelona to become a woman, later to become tragically involved with yet another woman whom he callously abandons as well.

Directing "All About My Father" at an often fevered emotional pitch, Almodovar centers on the 38-year-old Manuela (Cecilia Roth) who has a mutually dependent relationship with her 17-year-old son and would-be novelist, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). When the boy, a Truman Capote fan, is run down and killed by a car while seeking the autograph of actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), Manuela is traumatized, quits her job, and goes in search of the boy's father (Toni Canto)--who has become a transsexual living in Barcelona. After running into a transsexual friend from Madrid, La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), whom she saves from a beating in a red light district of Barcelona, she is hired as an assistant to actress Huma Rojo, who is currently performing the role of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire." Manuela also meets Huma's significant other, Nina (Candela Pena) who is in the role of Stella, and Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz) who prepares to go to El Salvador to replace a murdered nun when she is hindered from the assignment by an unusual predicament.

A kind of tagline to the movie which is utilized by Almodovar is Truman Capote's quote, "When God gives you a gift, He hands you a whip." This becomes clear as a calamity falls upon one women after another some time following her attainment of a blessing. Despite their misfortunes--or perhaps because of them--Almodovar treats these people whom only a mother could love with the greatest respect and dignity, showing the special spot he carries in his heart for the walking wounded and society's outcasts. Drug addicts, abused nuns, transvestites and transsexuals, whores, lesbians--all fall under the man's umbrella and are accorded compassion and affection.

"You're more authentic the more you resemble what you dream you are," is promoted as a manifesto of the film's comic genius, Antonia San Juan (in the role of the heavily plasticized La Agrado). This pronouncement is obviously the driving force of the warmth we feel for each of the personalities portrayed, and interpreted by Almodovar with camera work that shows an attention to detail and a fancy for luminous colors. The jazzy soundtrack gives an upbeat tone to a film which is serious about the plight of the women while remaining always heedlessly optimistic.

    Not Rated.  Running Time: 100 minutes.  (C) 1999
    Harvey Karten

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