Pedro Almodóvar’s film ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER makes an important reference to the play A Streetcar Named Desire. Pedro Almodóvar spoke to Filmmaker Magazine about the play’s resonance and importance to his film about the lives of women, “That play has a lot of meaning, and not only the meaning that Tennessee Williams intended, but all of the meanings it has for the characters in the film. For Manuela, doing that play was in some way a rehearsal for what she would then later do in her own life. She did that play 20 years before, and during that play, she met her husband Esteban, who would then become Lola. Esteban played Stanley Kowalski, and 20 years later he (or she) could play Blanche DuBois perfectly.
And also I like that sometimes reality, in terms of the story I’m telling in the movie, happens on the stage. And on the contrary, that scene that takes place outside the theater in Madrid — that billboard outside the theater theatricalizes the exterior of the theater — it’s a set, and in a way, it’s more theatrical than what’s inside on the stage.
But these things are meanings that I take for myself and that help me to not feel gratuitous. And I need it: I need to give an explanation to myself for everything that I do. I am not used to clarifying those private things, because sometimes they are very serious, sometimes they help you, sometimes they are not so meaningful.”
