All About My Mother (1999)

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Starring Cecilia Roth, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Rosa Maria Sardà, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín, Fernando Fernán Gómez. [R]

After suffering a tragedy, single mother Manuela (Roth) travels from Madrid to Barcelona to find her son’s birth father, a transvestite called Lola (Cantó); her journey leads to new and rekindled friendships with a pregnant, HIV-positive nun (Cruz), a cross-dressing prostitute (San Juan), and the actress (Paredes) who unwittingly helped cause Manuela’s grief. Not quite Almodóvar’s finest hour, but likely his most accessible up to that point, showcasing a newfound maturity without sacrificing his outrageous impulses and his championing of outsider eccentrics that most other filmmakers ridicule, marginalize or ignore. The central thrust of the narrative is awfully familiar—unconventional types filling out a conventional melodrama—but there’s no temptation to turn it all into camp (it’s actually a proud homage to the women in the filmmaker’s life, and mothers of all stripes). The camera loves them all, a flashy sheen that doesn’t blind from the finely-detailed flaws, with a pleasurable piquancy guarding each symbolic gesture. Not every emotion or reaction feels earned, and lacking a counterpoint to all the feminine celebration results in a shortage of dramatic tension, but the film’s internal logic bites a thumb at contrivance, and there’s no refuting the generous affection that’s generated by these soapy souls.

80/100