A Favorite: All About My Mother

Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother" is my second favorite film of his (he won Best Director at Cannes that year!), my 14th favorite film of the 90s, and my favorite film of 1999 (it won the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards that year too!). The film is narrated by the son of Manuella, a nurse who works in organ donation. The son wants to be a screenwriter. Just before his 17th birthday he begins writing a script about his mother. On his 17th birthday his mother takes him to a stage performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire." While trying to get an autograph from the star of the play, he is hit by a car. The rest of the film focuses on Manuella searching for her son's father, a transvestite prostitute, in Barcelona.  The plot sounds as if it's the stuff of soap opera or inspired from a Jerry Springer show, but somehow he manages to make us feel a great deal for the characters despite the unbelievable and embellished situations they find themselves in. I've never really understood why I like Almodovar melodramas and despise others' like Douglas Sirk's and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's. Anyway, Almodovar is a great, notable exception to the rule. Almodovar dedicates the 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 puts his own very idiosyncratic spin on the feminist film as well as the gay and lesbian film here. All the splashy colors and design are here per usual but also made more vibrant because the film was shot on location in Barcelona (the greatest, most beautiful city on Earth). The film is about love of all kinds but focuses especially on a mother's love. When Manuella flies to Barcelona she finds support from all kinds of women, from past friends to new ones. One is a warm and witty transsexual, La Agrado (translation: The Agreeable; she has one of the best scenes in the film, a monologue about her becoming a woman), one is a pregnant nun (Penelope Cruz as a youngin'), and the other is the star of "A Streetcar Named Desire." The film, then, portrays a very fun and special closeness that all four of these women develop amongst each other. Moreover, the film only gets better and better upon reviewing. If you can get your hands on it, watch it back-to-back a few times!