Tragic Kinky
FILM: All About My Mother
DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodovar
STARRING: Cecilia Roth, Penelope Cruz
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SISTER ROSA (PENELOPE CRUZ) HARBORS TWO CRUCIAL SECRETS AS ONE OF THE MANY
WOMEN WHOM PEDRO ALMODOVAR WEAVES INTO HIS LATEST WEB, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER.
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Pedro Almodovar has become one of the few European filmmakers since those in
the French new wave and the Italian neo-realists before them to become staple
figures in American cinema. His well-received films, including Women on the
Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Matador, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and
The Flower of My Secret, all have been wildly imaginative and
outrageously funny. Almodovar's current effort, All About My Mother,
achieves half that record. It's as imaginative as anything he's ever done. But
it's not much funny at all.
Written and directed by Almodovar, All About My Mother is
the story of Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a 36-year-old nurse and single mother
whose 18-year-old son is killed in a bizarre traffic accident while trying to
get an actress' autograph. Haunted by her son's frustrated desire to learn
about the father he never met, the grief-stricken Manuela sets out to find the
husband she abandoned during her pregnancy. Her travels reacquaint her with a
transvestite prostitute named La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), who lived with
Manuela and her husband during their marriage. La Agrado introduces Manuela to
Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a nun harboring two secrets: she's pregnant and
has AIDS. For additional kinks, Rosa largely is estranged from her mother (Rosa
Maria Sarda), who makes a living forging paintings in the style of Chagall.
Subsequently, Manuela becomes involved with Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), an
acclaimed stage actress currently portraying Blanche DuBois in a national
touring company of A Streetcar Named Desire. She is the actress
whose autograph Manuela's son died trying to get. In a world in which almost no
sexual pairings are heterosexual or faithful, Huma is a lesbian currently
conducting a torrid affair with Nina (Candela Pena), the woman portraying
Stella to Huma's Blanche. Nina has a serious drug problem, and, as a result,
Manuela has to replace her on stage one night at the last minute.
If all these spidery connections don't add up to a web, then a
final detail does. Sometime before they broke up, Manuela's former husband,
Esteban (Fernando Gomez), had transformed himself into Lola, a drag queen with
hormonally and surgically enhanced breasts, who nonetheless still liked women
for his sexual partners. Indeed, Manuela regards her relationship with
Esteban/Lola as having resulted in part from a desire to explore her own
lesbian side. Lola couldn't be faithful, however, and once Manuela was
pregnant, she decided she didn't want to raise her child with such a person for
a father. Now, she wonders if she hasn't let her beloved son go to his early
grave never knowing something essential about himself. And there still are more
complications.
Such details suggest something wild and wacky. But aside from a
flip line of dialogue or two, All About My Mother is resolutely somber
in tone. It's the story of damaged women trying to support each other through
trying times. The characters in this film all might demonstrate behaviors out
of the mainstream, but Almodovar doesn't lose sight of the fact that there is a
mainstream that provides little hospitality for the characters he depicts.
The film isn't nearly as tight as it should be. A subplot about
Manuela's donating her son's heart as a transplant organ for a middle-age man
with coronary disease is built up in the early going and then flatly abandoned.
Manuela's acting ambitions are too easily satisfied by her one night on stage.
Esteban/Lola's surprising appeal to women is asserted but never dramatized. I
also might complain about the absence of any traditional heterosexual male
characters, but I presume that's part of the point, though to what purpose I
can't quite determine. La Agrado considers herself transsexual. Esteban/Lola
hardly can be typified as "traditionally" male despite his heterosexual
appetites. The film hints that Manuela's son is gay. And Rosa's father, the
only male without a minority sexual orientation, is suffering from Alzheimer's
disease and is, at least figuratively, absent.
Despite such concerns, I found All About My Mother
thoroughly involving. Almodovar's inventiveness always keeps you in keen
anticipation for what he might come up with next. Fans should be forewarned,
however: if you've gone to this filmmaker's previous films for the laughs, you
might come away from this one disappointed.
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