Great Films:All About My Mother; by Pedro Almodóvar (1999)

Pedro Almodóvar’s “All about My Mother” ends with this dedication:

"A Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider.... A todas las actrices que han hecho de actrices, a todas las mujeres que actúan y se convierten en mujeres, a todas las personas que quirren ser madres. A mi madre." [To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider….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.]

They represent the best short description of this film: it is about actresses, mothers, transsexuals; women in general.

Pedro Almodóvar is certainly the most famous son of La Mancha, Spain after Don Quixote. Son of an illiterate villager, and completely self-educated in the craft of film-making, Almodóvar is the proof of the miracle called cinema. His directorial career has been one roller-coaster ride, where he has succeeded to break down almost all the taboos imaginable, transgressed every norm of film genres. He is, by far, the most significant ‘women’s director’ alive and working among us: despite the plethora of women directors in the scene, none have achieved the extent of womanhood Almodóvar has encompassed as an Auteur. His films constitute the canon we must study to understand the ‘feminine position’ of our time. His films are replete with homosexual and transsexual characters, who, unlike the Hollywood stereotypes, are quite happy and well-placed within their own sexualities. His films exude a florid joyousness that is truly his own. But, enough of Almodóvar for now. Let us get back to the film. “All about my Mother” [Todo Sobre mi Madre, 1999] is arguably his most mature and poignant film to date that deals with womanhood, motherhood, sexual identity, and existence in general. It garnered more awards and honors than any other film in the Spanish motion picture industry; Almodóvar won the Best Director award at Cannes, the film won Best Foreign Language Film Award in the Oscars, and it was a surprise to everyone that Cecilia Roth, the lead actress of the film, did not win any awards at the festivals.

The film tells the story of a nurse named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) who works in Madrid and lives with her teenage son Esteban, who never knew his father, and wants to be a writer. One night after watching a stage production of Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Esteban is running after the car of Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress who plays Blanche DuBois in the play, to get an autograph when he is hit by a car and dies. Manuela sees the accident and, despondent, leaves Madrid to visit her son's father, Lola, who is a transvestite and a prostitute in Barcelona, and inform him of the existence of the son he never knew existed. While in Barcelona, Manuela reunites with an old friend, a warm and witty transsexual prostitute named Agrado (Antonia San Juan), named so apparently because she wants to make everyone else’s life agreeable, chiefly by telling quirky jokes and giving blowjobs. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young, pregnant nun suffering from AIDS who has been impregnated by Manuela's ex-husband; and with Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired. In typical Almodóvar fashion, the film moves through segments of unabashed melodramas, yet never losing the grip, never becoming cheap, and never overdoing the sorrow. It is almost magical to watch Almodóvar making these tight-rope walks again and again, and succeeding in making something that cuts still too deep. Almodóvar, in his use of melodrama, does not expose, but de-centers it, not allowing the narrative to reach its cathartic climax. The end result is a fragmentary landscape of human emotions that feels heart-rendingly sincere.

This is the second Almodóvar film I have seen; the first one was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios). Unlike the earlier hilariously funny, sarcastic, internationally acclaimed film, “All about my Mother” is far more serious in tone. I certainly liked this film more than the first one. The mise-en-scene of Barcelona, the color schemes, the theatrical interludes works almost damn perfectly. This is as perfect as such idiosyncratic film can get.

The mothers of this film are not like the American ones, dropping their children at school and making French toasts, wearing their veritable Joan of Arc faces like enchanted talismans. Here, motherhood is a desire, a source of light that breaks through tremendous amount of pain and suffering. There is something Beethoven-like in the way Almodóvar expresses the joyousness inherent in womanhood through layers of deep agony. Yet, his treatment is not that of Beethoven, it is rather Schubertian in texture.

Yet, what is even more present through his absence is The Father: in the film, Manuela’s son writes in his notebook,

“This morning I looked through my mother’s bedroom until I found a stack of photographs. All of them were cut in half. My father, I suppose. I have the impression that my life is missing that same half. I want to meet him; I don’t care who he is, or how he treated my mother. No one can take that right away from me.”

In Almodóvar, the father is the supplement, the absent presence that haunts everyone. Sometimes the father may seem to be an utopia, even, but in totality, Almodóvar manages to keep a very subtle balance. In fact, the greatness of Almodóvar lies in his almost inhuman sense of balance: balance between utopia and dystopia, between melodrama and its extreme opposite, between feminism and its opposite. Only if every one had the subtlety to be so!

Cecilia Roth is simply brilliant as Manuela; standing among many exceptionally well-acted female characters, her character seems to be the strongest, one closest to the heart of the film, yet vulnerable and fragile like any other mother going through the loss of a son. An actress of lesser skill and understanding would have overdid the sorrow of this character and marred the film; on the contrary, Cecilia manages to show the humor, the strength, the intelligence of the character within that realm of sorrow. In short, I have discovered here in Cecilia Roth, an Argentinean actress, an able actor of flawless potential. Early in the film, after Esteban, Manuela’s son, is hit by a car, we see Manuela running towards him in a perspective shot. It represents the most difficult and the most pivotal moment of the film: although treated in a conventional albeit technically brilliant manner, it conveys something so intimate and passionate that seems disturbing. It represents the precarious chance Almodóvar takes by placing utmost importance on the acting skills of actors. Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz, and Antonia San Juan, deliver tremendous salvos of acting prowess, creating rounded characters that not only carry the film, they create it. In our days, there is rarely another film director who puts such weight on actors' abilities.

There are many more things to be said about this film: it has the potential to be widely discussed in cinema study courses across the world. But that will entail more exposure of the plot, and that will mar the delicious exuberance of this film. It is a great film, a near-perfect film, I can say this without any hesitation; it represents the pinnacle of one of the most original directors of our time. Recently, the film has been adopted for stage in London; people are flocking once again to savor the marvel of this narrative. The film is available in India through pirated Penélope Cruz collections; if you get a chance, DO NOT miss this film. It will be an unpardonable sin.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI