Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) (1999)

I've been meaning to see more Almodóvar films since watching Bad Education two years ago, but somehow never got around to it. But now the times, they are changing. Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) focuses on single mother and nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth), who has long kept from her son Esteban (Eloy Azorin) her own past and the identity of his father. After he is suddenly killed in a car accident while seeking an autograph from his favorite stage actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), she despairingly returns to Barcelona, where she lived before Esteban was born, to find his father. She meets up with old friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a streetwalker trying to keep up with the latest cosmetic surgeries while still keeping her penis for business reasons.

Agrado introduces her to Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young nun who tries to find Manuela a job, but instead ends up staying with her because she's secretly pregnant and doesn't get along well with her parents. The transgendered drug addict Lola (Toni Cantó), who had been in Rosa's care, is the father, but she robbed Agrado and disappeared. Lola also happens to be the unknowing father of Manuela's son. Soon enough Manuela gets a job working for Huma (the actress her son died for) as her assistant, helping to deal with her drug-addicted costar/lover, Nina (Candela Peña). All of these women interact in different ways, forming new friendships or rivalries over the course of several months. Manuela finds herself taking care of multiple people and is derailed from her mission to locate Lola, but many facets of the story come together by the end.

I have mixed feelings about this film. It is definitely interesting and creative in its story and visual style, with terrific performances all around and some fun dialogue. The colors pop, the settings are detailed and intimate, and shots are deliberate and well-executed. I loved Cecilia Roth, who imbues Manuela with an outer warmth and innate strength. Antonia San Juan is wonderful as talkative and straightforward Agrado, who talks very openly about her various operations and living as a woman with a male sex organ. I like how connected everyone is, and how the story almost solely focuses on female and transgendered characters. I also like the references to All About Eve. Todo Sobre Mi Madre has a lot of things going for it.

Then again, for some reason, I just couldn't really get into it. I'm not sure why. It might be the structure of the story: a lot of time passes but I didn't always feel it happening, so it'd be confusing to see characters' relationships at a certain point; the feel and seeming "goal" of the story changes several times, so I never got a handle on where the film wanted to go; there are a lot of characters given about the same amount of screen time (except for Manuela, of course, who remains the focal point), but I felt like I never really got to know most of them because their conversations were repetitive or didn't give much insight into their personalities or histories. I'm sorry I can't be more specific in my criticism, but there was just some ambiguous thing in the film's atmosphere that kept me from loving it. Still very good, just maybe not something I'd see more than once.

4/5