Review: Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother on Criterion Blu-ray

This resplendent Blu-ray testifies to the sumptuous beauty and thematic complexity of Almodóvar’s masterpiece.

All About My MotherPedro Almodóvar’s intimate and frank All About My Mother remains one of the Spanish auteur’s most affecting films. It begins by establishing the loving relationship, at once friendly and maternal, that an Argentine nurse, Manuela (Cecilia Roth), has with her teenage son, Esteban (Eloy Azorín). Given Almodóvar’s emotionally complicated, frequently parodic depictions of motherhood, Manuela’s shows of tenderness and affability are striking for their quaintness. Only the occasional scene of Manuela overseeing organ transplants at a Madrid hospital is palpable with any sense of disquiet, less for the nature of her work than the curiously drained expression on her face as she partakes in medical procedures. But as soon as we realize that these scenes are presented out of chronological order, the real source of her depletion at work becomes clear: that a heart she’s clearing for transplant is her son’s.

Broken by the experience of Esteban’s death, Manuela sets off to Barcelona to find the boy’s father, revealed to be Lola (Toni Cantó), a trans woman whose identity Manuela hid from their son. Manuela’s quest also brings her into contact with a number of people in Lola’s orbit: Rosa (Penélope Cruz), an HIV-positive nun who’s carrying Lola’s child; Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a trans sex worker and old friend of Manuela’s; and Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress whose autograph Esteban was chasing when he was struck by a car.

Adrift without her son, Manuela gradually forms bonds with these women. Manuela and Huma end up joining forces to track down Nina (Candela Peña), a drug addict who’s co-starring with the actress in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and the women form an instant rapport as mother figures searching for a lost child. Similarly, Manuela feels protective toward Agrado, with whom she reunites by stopping a man from sexually assaulting her.

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Almodóvar, though, doesn’t reduce these women to motherly types, as Manuela and Huma both broach their sexual frustrations with the other women, sometimes with shocking frankness. In a scene where Agrado speaks crudely about oral sex, for example, Huma initially sits with a look of Victorian prudishness on her face before turning wistful as she thinks about how long it’s been since she’s performed the act. And then there are the moments in which the younger characters are forced to confront the tragedies that have gripped their own lives, most memorably in a scene where Rosa visits her Alzheimer’s-stricken father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) and suffers the heartbreak of the man’s dog recognizing her while he doesn’t.

Social mores have shifted significantly in the two decades since this Oscar-winning film’s release, but it’s impressive how flagrantly transgressive All About My Mother remains. The trans characters deal with gender dysphoria while also speaking defiantly about their bodies, as in Agrado saying of her clients that they prefer her and other trans sex workers to be “pneumatic and well-hung.” Later, Agrado performs an impromptu one-woman show to make up for a canceled performance by Huma’s acting troupe, describing all of her surgeries in hilariously graphic detail to an increasingly enraptured audience.

Even at its wildest, though, this is one of Almodóvar’s most tender and empathetic films. Buried within its characters’ forthright vulgarity is an invigorating pride, a refusal to succumb to the wearying effects of social ostracization and autoimmune disease. Rejected by blood relatives, the characters forge new families and communities with other outcasts. As floridly colored and brightly lit as any of his other films, All About My Mother is Almodóvar’s most loving tribute to women and an elegy for their ability to endure hardship.

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Image/Sound

The film’s vivid colors are perfectly rendered on the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray. The omnipresent ruby reds and emerald greens of Affonso Beato’s color palette pop more than ever, and the overlit interiors sparkle and shine intensely. Compared to previous home-video releases of the film, image clarity has received a sizable boost, resulting in greater stability, more visible color gradations, and no image artifacts in darker shots. The 5.1 audio is immersive, fluidly mixing sound across all channels while retaining clear separation between elements even during the loudest swells of Alberto Iglesias’s score.

Extras

A 1999 short documentary consists of interviews with Almodóvar and his mother, Francisca, about his upbringing and her influence on his art, and includes footage of the family’s private life and the two discussing their odd but loving relationship. An hour-long documentary from 2012 covers the making of the film and includes retrospective interviews with the director, his brother and producer, Agustin, and members of the cast. There’s also footage from a 2019 Q&A conducted at a 20th-anniversary screening in Madrid, during which the cast and crew discuss their memories of the film and how it fits within Almodóvar’s body of work. An accompanying booklet contains an essay by film professor Emma Wilson that explicates All About My Mother’s themes of displaced motherhood, as well as an interview conducted at the time of the film’s release, and a written tribute to Almodóvar’s mother written by the director shortly after the film’s premiere and the woman’s death.

Overall

The stunning A/V transfer and in-depth extras on this resplendent Blu-ray testify to the sumptuous beauty and thematic complexity of Pedro Almodóvar’s masterpiece.

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Score: 
 Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz, Candela Peña, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín  Director: Pedro Almodóvar  Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 101 min  Rating: R  Year: 1963  Release Date: January 28, 2020  Buy: Video

Jake Cole

Jake Cole is an Atlanta-based film critic whose work has appeared in MTV News and Little White Lies. He is a member of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society.

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