All About My Mother [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Contrary to its title, the film is not about a mother, but about maternity or even paternity. Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a thirty-something nurse and single mother, lives alone with her son Esteban (Eloy Azorin), a Truman Capote fan writing a story about his mother for a competition. After watching A Streetcar Named Desire in a theatre, Esteban is hit by a car as he runs after the actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), who plays Blanche Dubois in the play, and dies in the arms of his mother. Manuela begins to search for Esteban's father (Toni Canto), who has now become a transvestite called Lola, La Pionera. Between Madrid and Barcelona, she meets several people, mostly women or transsexuals. Be they mothers, prostitutes, or nuns, women are the leading force behind the melodramas of Pedro Almodovar and his provocative questioning of social conventions. This film is dedicated to three women of the silver screen -- Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, and Romy Schneider -- who interpreted widowhood and hopelessness on screen in All About Eve (1950), Opening Night (1977), and L'Important, c'est d'aimer (1975). Almodovar is again trying to construct a family with this film, except that what he proposes is far from the traditional concept of family. His 'family' is comprised of women; from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which ends with pregnancy, he has come full circle. While proposing a new model of family, Almodovar is at the same time defending tolerance. Pedro Almodovar was named Best Director at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival in 1999, where the film was both widely acclaimed and expected to win one of the main film awards.