SYNOPSICS
Todo sobre mi madre (1999) is a Spanish,Catalan movie. Pedro Almodóvar has directed this movie. Cecilia Roth,Marisa Paredes,Candela Peña,Antonia San Juan are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1999. Todo sobre mi madre (1999) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
Argentine Manuela Echevarria, an organ transplant coordinator at a Madrid hospital, ran off from her husband in Barcelona eighteen years ago upon learning that she was pregnant, their son, Esteban, who she has never told about his father despite his curiosity, and her husband who didn't know about the pregnancy when she ran off. An event coinciding with Esteban, an aspiring writer, turning seventeen leads to Manuela feeling the need to return to Barcelona to look for her husband. There, she ends up further acting as the maternal figure for people in need. One is a young nun named Sister Rosa, who she meets through her old friend, a transvestite prostitute who has assumed the name Agrado in her agreeable nature. Rosa has a strained relationship with her own conservative mother, as she is consumed with caring for her ill husband, who suffers from Alzheimer's. The other is actress Huma Rojo, currently appearing as Blanche Dubois in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which ...
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Todo sobre mi madre (1999) Reviews
Almodovar's Poignant Study of Women.
Departing more and more from his more usual farcical style while retaining many of the elements that have made him the kind of storyteller he is today, Pedro Almodovar ended the year 2000 with a striking, passionate film that unless you had a rock for a heart you would never grasp its ultimate, compassionate essence. Manuela (Cecilia Roth) is at the center of this story, and through her unimaginable tragedy -- her son Esteban (Eloy Azorin) is killed in a freak accident while trying to get the autograph of his favorite theatre actress, Huma Rojo (played with great dignity by Spanish legend Marisa Paredes) -- she is able to reassemble the pieces of her life even though the people she encounters within her future bring her right back to her past. Almodovar films this in a completely non-exploitative way though there may be times when it feels as though it is, but being a Spanish film maker, I can see and appreciate where the growing passion reflected in many of its emotional scenes is coming from. The tragedies of these women, and of one of the more gender-confused men, all lead to that last gesture of maternal compassion, and the fact that Manuela decides to let her ex-lover Esteban, now a trans-gendered female, learn that not only did he have a son who died and loved him blindly but has another infant son borne from a nun (Penelope Cruz) is the core of what human relations are about: love which transcends errors, sex, character, even the absence of a father. A fascinating movie experience that resonates and brings the real Almodovar into the spotlight.
What a sensational study of the women universe!
This time of the year, when we talk about movies, we have to talk about Oscar. The nominees will be announced this Tuesday, but there are already favorites in some categories. Some people still doubt that "American Beauty" will win as best picture- which I don't, because I think it was the best film of the decade- but almost everyone agrees that this wonderful movie "Todo sobre mi madre"/ "All About My Mother" will win as best foreign language film. And it really deserves that. I've always recognized Pedro Almodóvar's talent. Most of his films are very weird and quite surreal, but sometimes I don't understand him. So I couldn't decide if I would see "All About My Mother" on the movies, or if I would wait for it to come out on video. It was released in Brazil last October, and only yesterday I went to see it at a local cinema. And... What did I think about it? Well... A true, true masterpiece! The story of the film is about Manuela (wonderfully played by Cecilia Roth), a nurse who works at a hospital in Madrid, Spain, and has a 17 year old son, Esteban, who doesn't know the identity of his father. On the day of his birthday, he dies in an accident and Manuela gets desperate. She reads his notes and finds out that he wanted to know at least the name of his father. So she goes back to Barcelona, where she got pregnant, trying to search for her ex-husband, but some surprises will change her life. What Almodóvar makes to this movie is just incredible. He makes us cry and laugh- specially in the scenes where the transvestite Agrado is. But, in fact, the film is a deep drama, studying carefully the female universe with strength and realism, and also explaining the importance of a mother. All the main characters are very well developed and each of them has some importance in the plot. It's really amazing how Almodóvar knows women so well, and how he loves and cares about them. His film is a very complex masterpiece, with some important messages and a wonderful story, and should be seen by everyone, even for the American people who don't like subtitles. But pay attention- the dialogues are fabulous! "All About My Mother" is surely on my Top 10 of 1999. And... let's wait for the Oscar nominees on Tuesday, but I'm sure it will be nominated, and certainly win. It's much better than last year's winner as a foreign language film, "Life is Beautiful", and is a serious must-see. Just do me a favor: DON'T MISS IT! Rating: 10/10
One of the most compelling movies I've ever seen.
I've watched this masterpiece by Almodovar four times. Each time I unearth new sequences of pure unadulterated truth, beauty, and genius. It is just a totally compelling and amazingly insightful comedy-tragedy that works on so many levels. Cecilia Roth is an Almodovar favorite, and there's no mystery as to why this is the case. She can express tragedy, wisdom, and an appreciation of dark humor only with her eyes and facial positioning, and express all three vividly at the same time. Her voice also is as commanding of respect as it is sexy and fragile. Almodovar eye for visual poems of incongruity reaches a new pinnacle in this masterpiece. First, there is the haunting by-play of darkness and light preceding Roth coming to the rescue of El Agreado. Much later, we are treated to the brightness of the upscale restaurant Roth where Roth waits for her ex-husband Lola juxtaposed with a merciless exploration of the vast dark despair of Lola's eyes. Between these bookend-style frames, the profound dualities abound. If you see one foreign language film per year, make this your next one.
A VERY PRIVATE UNIVERSE
Very few directors, since Bunuel, Fassbinder, Lindsay Anderson and Roman Polanski, have been able to translate their own, very private universes, to the screen. That is why, it divides audiences in such a radical way. You love it or you hate it. I think, that is the final objective of an artist, to express their view, to give us their own version of the world we live in. It enriches us, it makes us more aware of the million faces of human nature. Thanks to Almodovar we're allowed to feel identified with, what we may consider, marginal characters. What a different experience is to sit through an Almodovar film and a Ron Howard film for instance. Almodovar remains, becomes part of us, Ron Howard's vanishes as we're leaving the movie theater.
Todo sobre mi madre, all about you and me
What I like most about Almodovar's films, this one in particular, is the way he will grab you and pull you into a world you would not normally know and then, confront you with people's lives, emotions, relationships. Manuela, the mother who at the beginning seems so in control and clinical, earnest in her love and with the best intentions for her son, is shown to be much like you and me... full of doubts, questions, a need for answers and trying to understand how her life course has brought her to the present day and made her who she is. Barcelona in winter is richly filmed and serves as a backdrop for the renewing of old satisfying friendships and the budding of new ones, happening simultaneously and somewhat unexpectedly. It rings so true. The slow realisation that we are never really complete, that it's the people we love and live with, or avoid and later regret having done so, that makes us who we are. Almodovar sees the human condition and paints it carefully in this film.