Review: All About My Mother
Dateline: 1/6/99
Aside from a wonderful performance by Cecilia Roth and the architectural beauty of Barcelona, Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother is a disappointment.
I
won't claim to be a big fan of Almodovar. In fact, to date I've only seen two
of his previous movies: Women
on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Tie
Me Up, Tie Me Down. I didn't like either one very much; however, the
startlingly beautiful Rossy de Palma was a delight in both movies, particularly
as the brutish drug dealer on a scooter in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.
| "The plot is the movie's greatest downfall." |
The plot of All About My Mother is the movie's greatest downfall. Perhaps because it was contrived as an homage of sorts to the grandes dames of the silver screen (the title refers to the Bette Davis movie All About Eve), the main storyline, a mother's grief for her dead son during the search for the son's father, is diluted.
The scenes between Manuela, the lead played brilliantly by Cecilia Roth, and her son Esteban are touching. This is best exhibited in the scene where Manuela reads Esteban, an aspiring writer, the preface to Capote's Music for Chameleons, which was Esteban's present from Manuela in honor of his seventeenth birthday. This mood ends abruptly when, in an echo of the 1977 Cassevetes/Rowlands vehicle Opening Night, Esteban is killed while trying to get the autograph of the aging actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes).
