“All About My Mother”: An Ode to Mothers, Actresses, and Women
All About My Mother (1999) delivers with Pedro Almodóvar’s notorious largely female cast, a stylistic and cinematic choice epitomized in his earlier Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). Although, much of the campy humor that marked Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is left behind, making way for what becomes a mature drama interlaced with dark and absurdist comedic style. (Alert! Spoilers ahead.)
The film begins by delving into the intricacies of Manuela’s (Cecilia Roth) relationship with her teenage son Esteban (Eloy Azordín). Manuela and her son eat dinner together while watching All About Eve, a film that will become a reoccurring motif throughout. For his birthday, Esteban wants to go to work with Manuela where she oversees organ donor transplants and plays roles in organ donor simulations. Esteban, an aspiring writer, confesses that he is writing a piece about her. She immediately shows discomfort at this and reproaches the idea of him writing about her, yet agrees to let him come.
Later, as she is tucking him into bed, she gives him Truman Capote’s Music for Chameleons as a birthday present. He asks if she will read the book to him in bed, just like when he was a little boy. The scene is bitter-sweet — capturing cross-roads between adulthood and boyhood as we see this young man being read a bedtime story. While the image of them sitting together and reading appears charming, it is not without its element of nostalgia and discomfort as the subject of Capote’s text is so mature, so clearly not a children’s bedtime story that Manuela puts it down.
A Bit of Improvisation: From Simulation to Life
The themes of life, death, growth, and nostalgia, which linger in the background as Manuela plays her roles in donor simulations and reads to her son, become increasingly apparent after she takes her son to see A Streetcar Named Desire and he gets hit by a car while chasing Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes) for an autograph following her performance as Blanche. The accident is filmed from the first-person perspective of Esteban, until the subsequent scene which leads us back to the waiting room of Manuela’s work where she will live through the “simulation” she has, time and time again, performed.
Despite her initial discomfort at the thought of Esteban writing about her, the scene following his death is narrated by him as a sort of preamble to what becomes a film about her life. Almodóvar has dedicated the film to actresses and to actresses who play actresses, yet his belief that all women must act through life becomes evident when a grieving Manuela must improvise what her next step is. This parallel can be traced back to an earlier scene in which Esteban mentions that if his mom was an actress, he would write plays for her. Manuela’s subsequent improvisation through life appears to be a homage to her son.
Before his death, Esteban had asked for the truth about his father who he has never met. While she did not have the chance to tell him before his death, she nonetheless goes back to where she met the first Esteban and uncovers the truth about her past that her son was longing to hear. Once a new man walks out of a hospital in A Coruña with Esteban’s heart, Manuela travels to Barcelona from where she fled while pregnant 17 years ago in search of Esteban’s father, now a trans-femme-fatale named Lola (Toni Cantó).
In Barcelona
Upon arriving in Barcelona, she takes a cab to a field where cars, bikers, and sex workers circle around each other. Two sex workers play patty-cake in stilettos on the side of the road leading to the field. The murky and dingy lighting of the area occults most of the field’s details and is only alleviated by circling headlights that illuminate the women’s faces. The scene’s surrealist setting and the nightmarish glow of headlights, as noted by New York Times author Janet Maslin in “FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: Buoyed by the Strangeness of Kinship,” is more akin to a Federico Fellini vision than Almodóvar’s usual comedic filming.
Here, Manuela reconnects with her old-time friend, Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a trans trucker turned sex worker. Manuela and Agrado quickly continue their journey together throughout the film in search of jobs. The two women soon cross paths with a young nun played by Penelope Cruz whose life has also been touched by Lola, leaving her both pregnant and HIV positive.
An Ode to Tennesse Williams
The film continues to pay homage to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire after Esteban’s death. Manuela returns to watch the touring show of A Streetcar Named Desire she saw with Esteban the night he passed and begins working for Huma Rojo. One evening, Huma’s lesbian-drug-addicted lover is too high to perform and Manuela takes her part as Stella. Huma asks her whether she has experience acting and Manuela admits that she knows how to lie and has improvised a lot. At this point, the film reveals that Manuela met the first Esteban during a production in which they played Stella and Stanley. Almodóvar’s attention to A Streetcar Named Desire transcends its use in the film as a play that has marked Manuela’s life.
All About my Mother parallels A Streetcar Named Desire in the intensity and depth of its female characters. Blanche’s demure, refined, and reserved mannerisms after she suffers the loss of her husband and estate, are truly performative gestures that illustrate Almodóvar’s belief in the dramatic nature of life. Williams’ stylistic emphasis on the contrast between Stanley’s brutish behavior and Blanche’s modesty additionally paves the path for a critique of toxic masculinity, which Almodóvar himself has explored in his criticisms of Spanish machismo in films such as All About My Mother, Volver (2006) and Matador (1986).
Inclusivity: Sexism and Trans-Identity
Sexism continues to be a reoccurring theme in Almodóvar’s films, and his best way of addressing this topic by far appears to be the way he illustrates a woman’s (and in this case a mother’s) resilience and strength. The film itself is dedicated to mothers, women who wish to be mothers, and to Almodóvar’s mother.
The film also explores trans-identity and transitioning through characters such as Lola and Agrado. After a showing of A Streetcar Named Desire gets canceled, Agrado announces this to audience members and attempts to entertain those who wish to stay. Her dramatic and exuberant personality aids her on stage as she begins to recount the story of her transition, detailing her surgeries. “It costs a lot to be authentic,” she says, yet “you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed you are.”
All About My Mother is an excellent film from start to finish. It explores the intensity of life and death, motherhood and femininity, art and acting, and gender identity and sexuality. It is well-deserving of its title as 2000 Oscar and Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language Film.
