Todo sobre mi madre (1999) - film review

When her 17 year old son is killed in a road accident, Manuela gives up her well-paid hospital job and leaves Madrid for Barcelona in an attempt to repair her shattered life.  There she befriends an actress Huma Rojo, a transvestite prostitute La Agrado, and a failed nun, Sister Rosa, all of whom are scarred by life’s experiences.  Manuela’s aim is to find the father of her dead son...

Todo Sobre Mi Madre has earned its director Pedro Almodóvar rave reviews and won him a brace of awards, including: the best director award at Cannes (1999), the best foreign language film Oscar (2000), the best foreign film César (2000) and two BAFTAs (2000).  In the clear light of day, it’s somewhat baffling to see exactly why this film is so highly regarded, even by Almodóvar  enthusiasts.  The rambling plot is little more than a concoction of implausible contrivances and coincidences involving an ensemble of the most caricatured characters, the acting is at times painfully overly theatrical, and most of the film’s big dramatic moments have a touch of the absurd about them.   The death of Esteban is clearly sign-posted so early on in the film that it lacks impact when it arrives, with the result that much of the ensuing narrative is cruelly undermined.

There are perhaps two reasons why the film deserves at least some of the credit that has been heaped upon it by many reviewers.  The first is its amazing presentation which creates a sense of continual motion, of wanderlust, of things never settling or being resolved – which is exactly how life is, a relentless journey with nothing staying unchanged for long.    It’s a pity the melodrama works against this - it’s just too theatrical, too laboured for the emotions being portrayed on screen to make any impression other than the superficial.

The main reason why the film holds together as well as it does, and why it does deliver a real emotional punch in spite of its theatricality and some awful moments of sentimentality, is the magnificent performance from Cecilia Roth, who plays the central character Manuela.  No matter how phoney some of the dialogue may sound or how horribly contrived the situations are, Roth is never anything but totally convincing, and her contribution helps to transform a fairly mediocre film into something quite special.

© James Travers 2007

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