The Screening Room

All About My Mother (1999)

Date of first viewing: Sunday, March 30, 2003

Location: Home
Format: DVD

Finally! A fantastic film. Colorful, crazy, heartbreaking. Almodóvar calls it, "screwball drama." Taking elements from All About Eve, A Streetcar Named Desire, Opening Night, and probably other films I don't know about, this movie explores the ways in which women "act," and in so doing portrays them as thoroughly authentic, not in spite of the artifice, but in some ways because of it."

Two quotes from the movie sum it up: The character, Agrado, a transexual woman listing the sums of money she has paid to modify her body, concludes that every penny was worth it because, "You are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." And Pedro Almodóvar's dedication at the end of this film, "A Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider... A todas las actrices que han hecho de actrices, a todas las mujeres que actúan, a los hombres que actúan y se convierten en mujeres, a todas las personas que quieren ser madres.  A mi madre."" (Translation: To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Scheider... To all the actresses who have played actresses, to all the women who act, to men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.)

Thematically, All About My Mother reminds me of another of my all-time favorite films, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which also deals with issues of artifice and authenticity and is also emotionally deep and moving, despite it's flamboyant surface. This is one of the few films I will see again.

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