All About My Mother

This time of the year, when we talk about movies, we have to talk about Oscar. The nominees will be announced this Tuesday, but there are already favorites in some categories. Some people still doubt that "American Beauty" will win as best picture- which I don't, because I think it was the best film of the decade- but almost everyone agrees that this wonderful movie "Todo sobre mi madre"/ "All About My Mother" will win as best foreign language film. And it really deserves that.

I've always recognized Pedro Almodóvar's talent. Most of his films are very weird and quite surreal, but sometimes I don't understand him. So I couldn't decide if I would see "All About My Mother" on the movies, or if I would wait for it to come out on video. It was released in Brazil last October, and only yesterday I went to see it at a local cinema. And... What did I think about it? Well... A true, true masterpiece!

The story of the film is about Manuela (wonderfully played by Cecilia Roth), a nurse who works at a hospital in Madrid, Spain, and has a 17 year old son, Esteban, who doesn't know the identity of his father. On the day of his birthday, he dies in an accident and Manuela gets desperate. She reads his notes and finds out that he wanted to know at least the name of his father. So she goes back to Barcelona, where she got pregnant, trying to search for her ex-husband, but some surprises will change her life.

What Almodóvar makes to this movie is just incredible. He makes us cry and laugh- specially in the scenes where the transvestite Agrado is. But, in fact, the film is a deep drama, studying carefully the female universe with strength and realism, and also explaining the importance of a mother. All the main characters are very well developed and each of them has some importance in the plot. It's really amazing how Almodóvar knows women so well, and how he loves and cares about them. His film is a very complex masterpiece, with some important messages and a wonderful story, and should be seen by everyone, even for the American people who don't like subtitles. But pay attention- the dialogues are fabulous!

"All About My Mother" is surely on my Top 10 of 1999. And... let's wait for the Oscar nominees on Tuesday, but I'm sure it will be nominated, and certainly win. It's much better than last year's winner as a foreign language film, "Life is Beautiful", and is a serious must-see. Just do me a favor: DON'T MISS IT!

Rating: 10/10

Almodovar is masterful: he has created a film that seeps into you and rips apart your insides. Each moment is flawlessly crafted- the cinematography and light are lush, the writing is heart-wrenching. Loaded with irony and paradox, the story deals sensitively with a plotline that could have been sensationalistic. The strongest feature is perhaps the acting here, which is consistently superb, particularly in the case of Cecilia Roth, the lead actress. This may be the best film I have ever seen.

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.

Very few directors, since Bunuel, Fassbinder, Lindsay Anderson and Roman Polanski, have been able to translate their own, very private universes, to the screen. That is why, it divides audiences in such a radical way.

You love it or you hate it. I think, that is the final objective of an artist, to express their view, to give us their own version of the world we live in. It enriches us, it makes us more aware of the million faces of human nature. Thanks to Almodovar we're allowed to feel identified with, what we may consider, marginal characters. What a different experience is to sit through an Almodovar film and a Ron Howard film for instance. Almodovar remains, becomes part of us, Ron Howard's vanishes as we're leaving the movie theater.

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.