Almodóvar in Love...With Mom?

European art film, especially of the contemporary Cannes Film Festival marquis, continues on its exclusionary march toward a self-selected and well-informed audience with the addition of Pedro Almodvar's 13th full length film, All About My Mother. This film weaves together a beautifully crafted, though at times maudlin and contrived, plot with expert film technique. Yet in this attempt to re-create an All about Eve for the '90s, where life imitates acting imitating life, Almodvar's masterpiece runs the risk of alienating any viewer who isn't a film buff.

All About My Mother departs from Almodvar's usual campy and satirical style illustrating the sordid exploits of the sexually confused, the porn star, and the addict present in films such as "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck Me, Tim!" and "Sex Comes, Sex Goes." Rather, All About My Mother is Almodvar's exploration of the way "women faked, lied, hid and that way allowed life to flow and develop." This attempt to tackle the manipulation of reality won Almodvar the Best Director prize at Cannes.

All about My Mother opens with dramatic cinematic technique as the camera in close focus follows an IV line. The sense of determinism continues to operate as an amorphous force in every subsequent scene. The next shot is a scene in an impeccably furnished apartment in Madrid. Manuela, an organ-transplant nurse played by Cecilia Roth (a luminary of the foreign film industry, with an uncanny ability to evoke tears) sits watching All About Eve with her son, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). Esteban is turning 17 the next day, and his eyes seem bright with literary genius and joie d'vivre. The relationship between mother and son is close, with Manuela and Esteban joking about sex and exchanging intellectual banter.

The dream world of the next few scenes vanishes the next night, a rainy and cold evening and Esteban's birthday. Affonso Beato, director of photography, employs clever technique interposing dot matrix drawings of women in red over Manuela's image. Similarly, the night's coldness is reflected in camera angles of rain on the windows and fog in mirrors. One can almost feel the chill of the evening on one's shoulders. This clammy sensation follows the viewer as Manuel and Esteban observe a performance of Streetcar Named Desire, a play holding special significance to Manuela. Twenty years before, Manuela played Stella and her long-gone husband acted as Stanley in an amateur production. The play becomes a marker for Manuela's life, for after the performance, Esteban is run over in an attempt to secure an autograph from Human Rojo (Marisa Paredes), who plays Blanche DuBois. While true to her reputation, Manuela's agony appears the genuine product of intense emotional trauma; unfortunately, the overdone orchestration of camera technique ruins the power of Esteban's death. Almodvar shows Esteban's limp body through various mirrors and glass, and fades into true dimensions through moving the camera first back and then rapidly forward. The scene becomes reminiscent of a trip to the Hall of Mirrors and dilutes the power of the event that acts as a watershed for the rest of the film's plot.

However, after Esteban's death, Almodvar supplies the pretentious and melodramatic art film twist, losing the faith of anyone aside from the loyal film aficionado. Manuel donates Esteban's heart and goes to Barcelona in search of Esteban's father, a transvestite originally an Esteban himself but now Lola the Pioneer. The depiction of one train moving forward and another train moving backward, when coupled with Manuela's voice-over of the history and purpose for her journey detract from Almodvar's intention that the scene serve as a point of transition and departure. In an almost music-video-like sequence, a distraught Manuela peruses the local transvestite meat market. She does not find Lola, but she does come upon La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), or the agreeable one, Manuela's transsexual friend. La Agrado is the movie's ironic wit, garnering lines such as a full list of surgery she has undergone to look like an authentic woman: "almond shaped eyes, 80,000, silicone in lips, forehead, cheeks, and ass--the liter costs 60,000 pesetas; you add it up, because I stopped counting. Tits? Two. I'm no monster." Agrado's entry into the action gives the film a sardonic appeal but destroys the integrity of the drama. Penelope Cruz, one of Spain's up and coming actresses, meets Manuela as Sister Rosa, a beautiful young nun impregnated and infected with HIV by none other than the famous and increasingly mythical figure, Lola. Coupled with this twist, Manuela becomes a stage assistant for Huma's run in Barcelona. Thus, melodrama ensues--a transvestite, a nun carrying Esteban's half-brother and a woman on the run from her past.

The film's artistry borders on the over-done as the melodrama envelops the audience. The wallpaper patterns are reminiscent of '60s acid tripping posters, and the rooms seem too perfectly contrived. While red is normally a color used on camera to draw attention to an actress in a scene or emphasize a particular state of emotion in a drama, the women in All About My Mother are continuously cloaked in red. Thus, dress provides no clues as to where scenes of tension replace scenes of relaxation. Visually, each scene has an obnoxious similarity to the one before. Despite the melodrama and technique slip-ups, Almodvar allows the women to learn about themselves even though each woman creates a new reality within her existence. Manuela pretends to be a poor theater aficionado, Agrado pretends to be a real woman, Huma wishes to run from a heart broken by her cocaine-snorting junkie girlfriend, and Sister Rosa must hide from the order and her parents. Yet in this situation, four women learn that the kindness of strangers and the spontaneous solidarity of women is no fallacy. Acting and repression pave the way for a confrontation with reality; Lola greets the viewer in the end, debilitated with AIDS, and the melodrama is complete.

All About My Mother is dedicated to "all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers." Almodvar's intention is successful, for while the melodrama and subject context is difficult for anyone other than a film buff to appreciate, he does capture a heart-warming study of women who move from self-delusion to reconciliation.