I haven’t seen a lot of Pedro Almodovar’s films, but from the stuff I’ve been hearing the last few years, his reputation is growing. Before, he was known for making outrageous, sometimes campy melodramas -- well, I suppose he is still doing so, but lately, he’s gained a lot of critical acclaim. He won the Best Screenplay Oscar for his latest, Talk to Her, and his previous work, All About My Mother, had also received a lot of praise.

To describe All About My Mother is to helplessly accentuate the bizarre elements of its story, containing characters who usually don’t feature prominently in a movie. The characters include transsexuals, and transvestites (some of whom are prostitutes). There’s a lesbian couple, with a predominate age difference between the two of them, and a drug addiction with the younger woman. There’s also a nun who becomes pregnant. The lead character of this film had a child with a man who became a transvestite, and even had breast implants -- unlike what you would typically expect, the sex change happened before the couple conceived their child, and it was only through his deceitful, cheating ways that the marriage fell apart.

But despite all of this subject matter, All About My Mother is probably more akin to a movie from Douglas Sirk than some obscure film about alternative lifestyles. If Sirk could have gotten away with this stuff in the fifties, he probably would have. Anyone who enjoyed Imitation of Life would probably find something to enjoy here as well.

The movie begins with tragedy. A mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth), and son, Estaban, are celebrating the son’s 18th birthday -- they see a presentation of A Streetcar Named Desire. The son greatly admires the lead actress, Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), and tries to get her autograph -- her car drives away as he pounds on the window, and, seconds later, tossing all sense away, he decides to bolt for the driving car, before he gets run down by another car, killing him.

This tragic event forces the woman to track down her ex-husband, now a transvestite named Lola. She never did tell him (or is it her???) about their son, and feels that now she has to come clean. This necessitates moving from Madrid to Barcelona, the city she had abandoned all those years ago when she left her husband, and her past.

By coincidence, or fate perhaps, she finds an old friend, a transsexual prostitute, Agrado, while being taxied through the hangout spot for prostitutes and their customers. Agrado wants to help Manuela get established in Barcelona, but the only way she knows how is to go to the relief center, which is run by the church, and deals with helping out prostitutes and the like. Of course, this means that Manuela has to play along with the lie of being another prostitute looking for legitimate work, when she and Agrado discuss the possibilities with a young nun played by Penelope Cruz.

As well, Manuela returns to the very same theater company that performed A Streetcar Named Desire on that fateful night -- the company has now landed in Barcelona, and after the show, Manuela goes back stage. Again, is it fate that allows Manuela to see the young actress running off, and to tell Huma Rojo about it? It turns out that Huma and the young actress are lovers, and that the young woman is running off to score some drugs -- she gets Manuela to help her find the woman. After this, as thanks, Huma hires Manuela as her personal assistant.

So what we’ve got here is a setup for both melodrama and some occasionally campy humor. You’ve got the comedy in the character or Agrado, who is a force to be reckoned with, who has nothing to hide. And then you’ve got the melodrama in virtually everything else, most so in Cruz’s character, who doesn’t just get pregnant, but who becomes HIV-positive. And, naturally, as with all movies (or TV shows) of this nature, the melodrama and comedy collide -- in the wrong hands, certain plot elements would be in bad taste, while in the right hands, it would still be perilously close to being in bad taste, but convincingly so. It’s probably a little difficult not to snicker a bit when we discover that the sweet, innocent young nun, got pregnant.... and by that very same lecherous Lola, but at the same time .... Lola gave the poor woman AIDS!

I’m not familiar with a lot of Almodovar’s work, like I said. I have seen Live Flesh, and Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and the film we’re discussing here, of course, as well. But Almodovar seems like the perfect candidate for these sorts of melodramas. All About My Mother may not be as perfect a trashy film melodrama as Sirk’s Imitation of Life is, but Almodovar has the right idea -- he’s making his own stamp on the melodrama territory, while embracing the films and stories that came before him (both A Streetcar Named Desire and All About Eve are evoked prominently in this storyline), and doing more than mere homage. It’s clear that this is part of who Almodovar is --- I’m reminded of what millinocket said about Far From Heaven, where she claimed that it was too much of a Sirk homage to be effective as a stand-alone film. I haven’t seen that particular film, but somehow I feel that All About My Mother would still be more effective -- it’s clear that you can get something out of this film even if you haven’t seen a specific classic melodrama.

The reason this is a good melodrama is because it’s trashy and outrageous, yet still comprehensible to real people. Even though many of the characters are unusual, they are still human. Manuela is a woman who has run away from elements of her past when things went horribly wrong --- first, with her ex-husband, and then later on with the death of her son. There’s another great moment involving her reaction to her son’s death -- the son’s organs are to be donated, and his heart is used for a heart transplant, and she (interestingly enough, she works for the organ donation agency) unethically looks through the files to find out who got the heart, and follows the person. No doubt many mothers in her situation would do the same thing, as they obviously feel a need to find out where a part of her life has gone.

Even some of the more outrageous characters have familiar elements. Lola is described by Manuela as having the worst attributes of both sexes, and that seems correct -- he is more interested in making sexual conquests (male), yet is vain, and melodramatic like some women, especially during the ending of the film. Agardo, while more for comic relief, is certainly a harbor of truth, especially during an impromptu monologue in which she talks about much it costs to be genuine -- she talks about how much it cost for all that plastic surgery in order for her to be the “genuine” woman she is now. It’s almost an equivalent of the idea that if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made -- and even though she is a transsexual, her statements might also apply to “normal” women, who find themselves needing to embellish themselves in order to project a desired persona or personality. And the lesbian couple experiences things that will be familiar to many people -- the older actress is hooked on the younger actress, just as that younger woman is hooked on drugs. Love is a strange thing, as I can understand from within and from other people whom I know.

As a melodrama, All About My Mother works quite well, although I admit that I don’t actually get emotionally affected by most melodramas --- never follow the needed emotional reaction to tear-jerkers, even though I certainly appreciate the style of such films, and will most likely get around to another Almodovar film.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day