FILM CHALLENGE: 16) All About My Mother

16) All About My Mother

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Year: 1999

Plot Summary: A single mother in Madrid, Manuela, sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. One of his last requests before he died was to know who his father was, so Manuela goes on an adventure to find the man - a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child.

In the hands of anyone else, this bizarre, ambitious, quirky and melodramatic meditation on womanhood would have fallen apart into a shambolic and absurd mess. However, Pedro Almodovar somehow makes it a touching and entertaining hybrid of drama and comedy.

In All About My Mother, the many different roles that women could perform in life - mother, daughter, wife, grandmother, sister, nun, lesbian, prostitute and even transsexual - all collide playfully with each other in this 90 minute ensemble piece. But despite the vast number of roles and characters that appear in the film, every single one is three-dimensional and well-developed in a way that makes you care about their stories.

Moreover, the entire cast are all stunningly performed and it's almost impossible to single out one particular person who shines the brightest in the movie.

As is almost always the case in the director's work, there are a number of odd twists and surprises throughout the narrative. But despite these bizarre events, All About My Mother is lovingly crafted and has a gentle humor and a genuine affection for its characters, therefore, you cannot help but submerge yourself in the lurid soap opera that is being presented to you.

Almodovar displays, yet again, his unique gift for transforming some wildly overdone melodrama into a subtle and evocative little film.

Moreover, All About My Mother blossoms with the usual brilliant colours, lavish backdrops and lovely images that have made Almodovar such a popular director. This bright, colourful world the characters inhabit helps to enhances the viewer's experience of their characters' joys. Also, by contrasting it with their sorrows, it allows the audience to relish such sadness with a particular poignancy.

It's not a masterpiece like Talk To Her, but All About My Mother is a tremendously entertaining piece of work. Moreover, Almodovar must be applauded for making a film about women, dedicated to women and starring only mainly women despite being a man. This rare and unusual gift of being able to create a piece of fiction that so brilliantly characterises females shows just how talented the Spaniard really is.

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with 1 comment