Details
Movie Description
Cecilia Roth stars in this celebrated film from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Distraught over the death of her teenage son, Manuela drives to Barcelona to find the boy's father, an itinerant transsexual named Lola (Toni Canto). While combing the city's less reputable districts, she also meets up with Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a sassy transvestite prostitute, and Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a pregnant nun on her way to El Salvador. She also becomes the manager for Huma (Marisa Paredes), the actress her son idolized, and helps her through a run of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Together these great ladies bond through various heartrending crises, enduring the pain and celebrating the beauty of being women (or almost women). Considered to be one of Almodóvar's most fully realized works, this charming and unique film blends his earlier gender-bending irreverence with the mature grace and compassion of his later work, striking a perfect note of humor and pathos.
Synopsis
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's tender, intelligent drama follows the emotional journey of Manuela, an organ transplant coordinator who scours the back alleys and gutters of Barcelona in search of her errant ex-husband (a half-transsexual prostitute named Lola), saddled with the devastating news that their only child has died. Along the way she forges a unique bond of friendship with a similarly burdened and truly bizarre group of women, including a scandalized nun, a lesbian starlet, and her heroin-addicted lover. With intricate strokes both humanistic and humorous, Almodóvar weaves a touching, beautiful story about the strength of motherhood and the resilience of the human spirit.
Film Notes
Theatrical release: November 24, 1999.
Filmed on location in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
The film also won the 1999 New York Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won that category the same year for the National Board of Review, the British Independent Film Awards, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
The film won the 2000 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won the Golden Satellite Award for that year in the same category, as well as France's Ceasar Award, the British Academy Award, and the Chicago Film Association Award.
Industry Reviews
"...[The film] dramatises a general condition with formal elegance, nuanced observations and emotional resonance..."
Sight and Sound - p.40 - Jose Arroyo (09/01/1999)
"...Emotionally satisfying and brilliantly played....[The film's] witty script focuses on the characters' stoic resilience and good humor..."
Variety - p.47 - Jonathan Holland (05/19/1999)
"...The best foreign movie of the year....A unique and unforgettable tribute to female solidarity..."
Rolling Stone - p.90 - Peter Travers (12/09/1999)
"...It weaves life and art into a rich tapestry of love, loss and compassion..."
New York Times - p.E14 - Janet Maslin (11/19/1999)
"...Almodovar creates an impressively rich, evocative film replete with uniformly fine performances..." -- 4 out of 5 stars
Box Office - Lael Loewenstein (07/01/1999)
"...Mothers definitely get their due here....There is certainly an array of outrageous characters..."
USA Today - Mike Clark (11/19/1999)
"...Almodóvar's masterwork, a synthesis of the director's fabulous fetishes..." -- Rating: A
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum (01/07/2000)
Quotations
"They call me La Agrado, because I have always tried to make everyone's life more pleasant. I used to work the streets, on bridges, near the cemetery. Aside from being pleasant I am also very authentic: almond shaped eyes, 80 thousand; silicone in lips, forehead, cheeks, hips and ass, the liter costs sixty thousand pesetas...you add it up because I stopped counting. Tits? Two, I'm no monster. Seventy each, but these have been fully depreciated. It cost me a lot to be authentic, but we must not be cheap in regards to the way we look. Because a woman is more authentic the more she looks like what she has dreamed for herself.--Agrado (Antonia San Juan)
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