All About My Mother

This Spanish film by Pedro Almodovar is at once very strange and very ordinary. As typical with the popular director's (in the credits he is simply referred to as ALMODOVAR) works, All About My Mother is saturated with bright colors. It is something of a high production soap opera - full of obvious tragedy, melodrama, and thick emotions - but his subject matter, and treatment of it, is unusual. A Madrid mother returns to Barcelona after her eighteen-year-old son is killed and seeks out her old transvestite/prostitute friend, who leads her to a tainted nun with whom the mother shares a peculiar mutual friend. The characters are mostly unsubtle deviants: transvestites, transgenders, bisexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, and surgical creations; but they are, for the most part, unabashed, if not proud, with regard to their societal status. The film contains continual references to the play A Streetcar Named Desire, and, not surprisingly, its outlandish characters all seem a little too theatrical. It is, in the end, a bizarre but sincere homage to motherhood and femininity.

WORTH WATCHING
3 out of 5
Download: All About My Mother

Plot: 3
Imagery: 3
Originality: 3
Soundtrack: 3
Overall: 3