CL R1B.017: Family Portraits Spring 2018 – Mussman

All About Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre)

Essential Information About the Film • Released: 1998 • Director: Pedro Almodóvar • Producer: Agustín Almodóvar & Miguel Ruben • Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar • Cinematography: Alfonso Beato • Music: Alberto Iglesias

Character Short Description Actor Nurse, cook, assistant, amateur actress; Manuela everyone’s mother; from a small town in Cecilia Roth Argentina A great actress known for her Blanche Dubois in Huma Rojo A Streetcar Named Desire, the second Esteban’s Marisa Paredes (humo: smoke) heroine, Nina’s lover A kind-hearted, HIV-positive pregnant nun, Sister Rosa Penélope Cruz mother to the third Esteban La Agrado A trans prostitute, an old friend of Manuela’s, (agradar: to eventually Huma’s assistant; has a strong accent Antonia San Juan please) that marks her as being from the Canary Islands Heroin-addicted actress who plays Stella to Nina Candela Peña Huma’s Blanche, Huma’s lover The first Esteban, father to Estebans two and Lola three; Manuela’s ex-husband; from the same Toni Cantó small Argentine town as Manuela Manuela and Lola’s son, aspiring writer, dies on Esteban Eloy Azorín his eighteenth birthday Sister Rosa’s estranged mother; forger of Rosa the Elder Rosa María Sardà Chagall paintings Fernando Fernán Rosa’s father Suffers from Alzheimer’s Gómez the third Son of Sister Rosa and Lola, Manuela’s ward, some baby Esteban neutralizes HIV in record time

An Example of a Formal Reading of (this) Film: [The] alternation of motion and stasis is played out in Almodóvar’s shooting and cutting style. Almodóvar has remarked how reluctant he now is to move the camera without good cause. Such key moments as the son Esteban’s accident are shot with studied simplicity: the camera merely cants sideways to the ground as, from the dying son’s POV, we see a sodden Manuela come howling into the shot. Three subtle features, however, contribute to the film’s narrative and aesthetic effect. The first is the slow pans along the walls, floors and curtains which introduce many sequences. Like Ozu’s interpolated shots of flowers or chimneys, unmotivated by the plot, Almodóvar’s pans suggest his characters are caught up in the web of accidents that make up everyday life and cannot be extricated from the highly coloured locations they inhabit. The second technique is the dissolve. The grid of Esteban’s notebook fades into the flashing lights of the theatre in which Huma is performing, a reference at once tragic and ironic to the unwitting cause of the youth’s death. Or again, Almodóvar cuts from the black mouth of a waste bin to the ever-receding railway tunnel through which Manuela flees the city. Narrative pace is quickened by bold, elliptical editing which cuts like a knife: located as we are within Manuela’s mind, we see like her only those essential elements that drive forward her drama of primal loss and ultimate redemption. The final technique here is the two shot. Consistently exploiting the widescreen and scorning TV-friendly square compositions, Almodóvar’s framings privilege the relationships between the characters. In the prologue mother and son are kept constantly together, whether watching Bette Davis on television or Huma Rojo on stage. Later the central figure of Manuela will generously share the frame with the supporting players: Huma, Rosa, La Agrado and Nina, Huma’s junkie lover. Superficially similar to Live Flesh, which also focused on relationships between multiple characters and boasted sharp shooting and cutting, All About My Mother is here significantly different than its predecessor. For, as the two shots suggest, the bond between the characters is not sex, but rather simple solidarity. Perhaps the boldest of Almodóvar’s innovations is to secularize Catholic iconography and ideology. Manuela is Mary in a new holy family (hence the appearance of the Sagrada Familia), the grieving mother of a son of doubtful paternity. Chic sister Rosa (splendidly underplayed by Spain’s favorite young actress Penélope Cruz) will be martyred by the contemporary afflictions of unmarried motherhood and AIDS. And, finally, the Biblical injunction to love thy neighbor will be fully put into practice by Manuela, embracing the lives, loves, and even babies of the women she meets. But she does so not in the name of Christ but in the name of the Blanch Dubois played on stage by Huma: we are all shown to be dependent on the kindness of strangers. from Paul Julian Smith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (London: Verso, 2000), 166-7

Adapted from Alex Brostoff and Thom Sliwowski