“LIFE IS EXTREMES”

By Raymond Benson

The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film of 1999 was Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre), easily one of the now 70-year-old auteur’s most beloved and accomplished works. As actress Penélope Cruz states in one of the supplemental documentaries accompanying the film in Criterion’s magnificent new Blu-ray edition, Almodóvar makes movies about extremes and he makes movies about life. “Life is extremes,” she says, and it’s an apt description of Mother.

Almodóvar is known for his highly eccentric, colorful, and socio-political dramas and comedies that often take place in the worlds of theatre, the LBGTQ milieu, and the walks on the wild side of modern urban Spain, especially Barcelona. He can be surreal, harkening back to the style of his great fellow countryman, Luis Buñuel, but one can see the more significant influence from the likes of Italian filmmakers Federico Fellini and Lina Wertmuller. It is also evident that Almodóvar loves old Hollywood, as All About My Mother demonstrates with its echoes of Bette Davis and All About Eve.

The story concerns single mother Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse who works with transplants. Her 17-year-old son, Esteban, is hit by a car in the street after the pair had seen his favorite actress, Huma (Marisa Paredes) as Blanche in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Manuela then takes it upon herself to find Esteban’s father in Barcelona to tell him that they had had a son together and reveal the painful news of the accident. The father, however, is now a transgender woman named Lola who lives on the fringes of society and isn’t easily reachable. In the meantime, Manuela becomes the personal assistant to Huma; reacquaints herself with an old friend, Agrado (Antonia San Juan), who is also a transgender woman and a sex worker; and befriends a nurse, Rosa (Penélope Cruz), who happens to be pregnant with Lola’s child (and has also acquired something far more serious from Lola).

While there are plenty of comedic moments in the film, as is Almodóvar’s way, this is a drama that touches heavily on the themes of motherhood, the challenges of a transgender lifestyle, and AIDS, as well as religion and its relationship with all of these things. It’s a powerful, beautifully acted and exquisitely shot social statement that was a shocking revelation in 1999 and is just as potent twenty-one years later. It’s Almodóvar at his best.

Criterion’s new edition sports a 2K digital restoration supervised by Almodóvar and his executive producer (and brother) Agustin Almodóvar, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The all-important Almodóvar colors are appropriately vibrant—almost “day-glo.” The transfer is simply gorgeous.

There are three supplements. Part of the series A Film and Its Era, the 52-minute “Once Upon a Time—All About My Mother” (directed by Serge July and Marie Genin) is an excellent and informative 2012 documentary on the making of the film, and it contains interviews with Almodóvar and many of the cast and crew. A 48-minute Q&A from a 2019 twentieth anniversary screening of the film featuring the director, his brother, and actress Paredes, is enlightening (it also contains a preview of Almodóvar’s latest picture and Oscar nominee, Pain and Glory). The most interesting of the three supplements is the short 1999 piece on the film that focuses on Almodóvar and his mother, who definitely has strong opinions about her son’s work!

All About My Mother is a cinephile’s dream, a picture that gets under the skin and stays there. Highly recommended.

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