All About My Mother

As this was my first Almodovar movie I didn't quite expect that much,was I ever going to be surprised.Almodovar is widely seen as the greatest Spanish cineast since Luis Bunuel,which I really like,and I must say that I concur with that.The resemblances between the two directors are also there,both use intense drama and comedy in one scene to great effect and both attack the church in a big way.

TODO SOBRE MI MADRE is simply one of the best drama's I've ever seen because of it's superb acting and difficult but inventive storyline.The characters are also very well worked out. Leading lady Cecilia Roth is sensational as the mourning mother and the rest of the cast isn't any worse.The supporting roles by Penelope Cruz,Marise Paredes and especially Antonia San Juan are great.San Juan is a real time transvestite which makes it even more realistic. Almodovar caused quite a commotion with this provocative film although it never goes over the line(at least not in my taste)but you should not be old fashioned or truly religious because then it will offend you.

The humor that is put in the film makes it an even better experience.The mixture of intense drama and comedy is perfect.Another brilliant addition is the great soundtrack.The mixture between harmonic classical pieces and jazzy compositions is magnificent.

I can't wait to see more of Almodovar's work. 9/10 (currently number 39 in my all time top 100 list)

Almodovar has really matured. 'Women on the Verge' was a lot of fun, but ultimately fairly superficial. In recent years, he seems to have started to turn his back on kinky sex and excessive behaviour, and probe the human psyche with a lot more depth and subtlety. This tender film is the latest stage in this ascending path, and very welcome it is, too.

Cecilia Roth's performance is utterly convincing - profound, varied, humane. The other characters are strongly drawn, too. The photography is excellent, and even the tricksy shots aren't too distracting. The narrative is not without surprises (the tragic event early in the film is called to mind constantly without ever becoming maudlin). It's a little slow in places, and there are moments of unintentional humour, but overall this represents the best work of this director that I have seen.

One thing is for certain: you sure can't accuse Pedro Almodovar's `All About My Mother' of narrative timidity. In its relatively brief 102-minute running time, it provides a literal smorgasbord of sensational plot elements: a fatal car accident, a dead teenaged son, organ transplantation, transvestite prostitutes, lesbianism, pregnant nuns, drug addiction, AIDS, Alzheimer's, and death by childbirth – more than enough juicy elements to warm the heart of any lover of classic melodrama or daytime soap operas. Even if the film had dealt with only half of these issues, it would still be a challenge to maintain some sort of overall focus. As it is, we spend most of the movie staring in head-scratching amazement at the sheer audacity of the enterprise.

Certainly, the critics have not been stingy in heaping effusive praise on the work and both the Motion Picture Academy and the Foreign Press Golden Globe committee have echoed that praise by bestowing on the film their coveted awards for Best Foreign Language Film of 1999. But does the film really merit all these critical hosannas and kudos? Not by a long shot! Jaded as we may be by the deadening predictability and lack of originality that, sadly, define the majority of films released each year, it is, nevertheless, still incumbent upon us not to be bowled over by a film that takes the alternate path of undisciplined bizarreness. `All About My Mother' cries desperately to be a moving and important study of women's roles in society, but, by trying to compress so many of the eccentricities of life into one story, the film leaves us more incredulous and perplexed than stimulated and touched.

One element does succeed brilliantly, however, and that is the outstanding performance of Cecilia Roth in the leading role of Manuela, an attractive 38-year old mother who, upon the sudden death of her child, is compelled to return to the dark past she long ago fled and to seek some sort of redemption. She provides us with the warm center of human compassion this film so desperately needs to keep it from becoming a completely clinical exercise in absurdity. Streamlined perhaps, her story might have made for a fascinating and incisive film. But Almodovar is so busy loading up his film with rather obviously drawn parallels that we really never believe a minute of it. The film is rife with ineffectual and pretentious allusions to `All About Eve' and `A Streetcar Named Desire,' as the movie characters' lives take vaguely similar paths to those of the characters found in those works. And the finale, in which Manuela's maternal affections find a new object to latch on to, seems coy and artificial – an attempt to leave the audience on an emotional high after all the misery and heartbreak it has witnessed in the course of the film. The whole enterprise, ultimately, seems hopelessly artificial.

That artificiality at least justifies the gorgeous look of the film. Almodovar has, as always, splashed across the screen his usual array of brightly colored walls, furniture and clothing that makes the film seem to exist in a world located somewhere between realism and surrealism. This bold visual palette is always one of the joyous fringe benefits that accompanies the watching of an Almodovar film.

Unfortunately, in this case at least, he hasn't created a film with a story, cast of characters or theme to match in quality or intensity the glorious, many-hued background he provides. Despite all its many awards and its extraordinary critical acclaim, `All About My Mother' doesn't hold a candle to Almodovar's truly wonderful previous film, `Live Flesh.' Check that one out instead and see the difference.

I've watched this masterpiece by Almodovar four times. Each time I unearth new sequences of pure unadulterated truth, beauty, and genius. It is just a totally compelling and amazingly insightful comedy-tragedy that works on so many levels.

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.

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 Roth 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 your next one.

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, relationships. 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. 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. It rings so true. The slow realisation that we are never really complete, that it's the people we love and live with, or avoid and later regret having done so, that makes us who we are. Almodovar sees the human condition and paints it carefully in this film.