The series A posteriori le cinéma is intended to be an opportunity to celebrate the 7the art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
To celebrate her son Esteban’s 17th birthday, Manuela takes him to the theater where the great Huma Rojo is performing that evening. However, while trying to get an autograph after the play, Esteban dies when hit by a car. Resigning from her job as a nurse, Manuela leaves Madrid and settles in Barcelona, where she hopes to find the father of her only child. There, she reconnects with Agrado, a former trans prostitute who helps her get back on her feet. Soon, Rosa, a pregnant and HIV-positive nun, and Huma, the actress Esteban admired so much, will also gravitate around Manuela. With All about my mother (Todo sobre mi madre), released in Spain 25 years ago, in April 1999, Pedro Almodóvar displayed unprecedented maturity and virtuosity.
Oscar for best international feature film and Best Director Award at Cannes, this film, both dark and colorful, is first and foremost a vibrant tribute to women, actresses and especially mothers, by a filmmaker who loves them passionately and who is then at the height of his immense talent. He will then dazzle with Speak with her (Hable con ella), Volver, The skin I live in (The skin I live in)…
Anyway, the closing epigraph All about my mother is crystal clear: “To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider… To all the actresses who have played actresses, to all the women who play, to the men who play and transform themselves into women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother. »
In his essay on the film written for CriterionProfessor Emma Wilson addresses the central theme in these terms:
“No Almodóvar film shows the figure of the mother with as much love as this one. It is her masterpiece of maternal desire and loss, a film of extraordinary gentleness. It was made in the last months of life of Francisca Caballero, the director’s own mother, who appears in several of his films. »
From the outset, Almodóvar establishes the unconditional, boundless nature of Manuela’s love for her boy. Indeed, when he jokingly asks her if she would go so far as to prostitute herself for him, Manuela responds straight away: “I have already done almost everything for you. »
Spiritual sisters
As for the figure of the actress, she is just as celebrated. For the anecdote, Almodóvar films the accident that takes Esteban’s life like the one that occurs in Opening Nightby John Cassavetes, where Gena Rowlands plays… an actress.
Other references attest that Almodóvar intends to salute the cinematographic and theatrical works which marked him: the title of his film refers to All About Eve (Eve), by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, where Bette Davis plays… an actress, again.
The most obvious example, however, lies in the sustained recourse to the piece A Streetcar Named Desire (A Streetcar Named Desire), by Tennessee Williams. In his film, Almodóvar casts Huma in the role of Blanche, then reveals that Manuela has already played Stella opposite the future father of her son…
In an analysis included in the work All About AlmodóvarIsolina Ballesteros notes this about the piece and the functions given to it by the filmmaker:
“ All about my mother deals, among other things, with the capacity of the performing arts to motivate a move to action and to create solidarity between women. The “feminist” version of Tramin which Stella leaves her violent husband in order to support her sister Blanche, echoes not only Manuela’s real determination, but also the solidarity that arises from the latter’s attachment to her spiritual sisters Huma, Rosa [son double dans la mesure où elle attend un enfant du même homme qui lui en a fait un jadis], and Agrado. »
In his review published in the New York TimesJanet Maslin agrees: “ [Le film] interweaves life and art into a rich tapestry of love, grief and compassion. The various female figures – real, theatrical or trans – evolve beyond the stage of nervous breakdown towards something much more lenient. »
Magnificent tear
Like these characters, Almodóvar himself seems to have reached a phase of plenitude. As Janet Maslin further notes:
“The sparkling antics and daring exaggeration of his earlier films have flourished [comme l’annonçait en 1997 l’envoûtant En chair et en os/Carne trémula] into a newly sophisticated style, infinitely more passionate, wise and deeply felt. »
In The worldThomas Sotinel evokes the beginning of a period of “maturity” and describes All about my mother of “magnificent tear”. He continues: “Beneath the appearance of melodrama, the film hides an authentic sense of tragedy. »
This “sense of tragedy”, admirably modulated and hitherto absent in Almodóvar, perhaps explains why, despite the resounding worldwide success of Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (Women on the verge of an attack of nerves) in 1988, Cannes waited more than a decade before inviting into competition the man nicknamed “the enfant terrible of Movida”. In the meantime, remarkable works like The flower of my secret (The flower of my secret) And In the flesh would not have spoiled the prestigious event.
Sotinel, this time in his work dedicated to Almodóvar published by The Cinema Notebooksdenounces a certain French institutional snobbery towards the filmmaker that French film buffs did not share:
“France has a curious relationship with [Almodóvar] ; it ignored it longer than other countries [New York l’a honoré avant Paris] […] But since Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the French public remained loyal to him. »
It is true that melodrama is a typically Hollywood genre, while tragedy has distinctly European roots. However, simply denigrating one and praising the other constitutes an error, considers Mark Allinson in one of the analyzes gathered in All About Almodóvar.
“Often, this distinction leads to a simplistic division between tragic theater as a noble art and melodramatic cinema as a popular art. To such a Manichean division between great tragedy and popular melodrama, we could oppose the character of Manuela in All about my mother, which amply demonstrates how a melodramatic role can be artistically the equal of a tragic role. »
Faced with the masterful composition of Cecilia Roth as Manuela, we can only applaud this reading.
Vision of motherhood
Interestingly, in 2021, the filmmaker will return to the theme of motherhood in Parallel mothers (Parallel mothers), but by integrating Spanish history rather than theater into its story, for a different, but equally brilliant, exploration.
The final word to Emma Wilson, who in her essay returns to the evolution of the figure of the mother in the work of Pedro Almodóvar:
“Her vision of motherhood, in particular, revealed itself over the years to be more and more expansive: intense and crazy, devoid of judgment, extreme, full of agony and adoration, of the irreverence of What did I do to deserve this? [¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto ?]with the tighter ties of Pain and glory [Dolor y gloria]. But it is in All about my mother — a quiet tribute to a mother who has not yet died — that maternal love is revealed in its most fervent and precious form. »
The film All about my mother is available on VOD on several platforms