1.14.2000
Dreary premise bears a flamboyant confection

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Movie credits and rating

A middle-aged woman returns to Barcelona to help heal her heart following the senseless death of her teenage son in All About My Mother.

It sounds as if all this would make for a dreary tale, but -- voila! -- All About My Mother is a confection from offbeat, counter-culture Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, which means that anything is possible. This means a cast of characters that includes two flamboyant transvestites, a stage actress doing Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, her female lover-junkie co-star, a pregnant nun who is HIV-positive, her status conscious mother, her father who's suffering from Alzheimer's disease plus parallels to All About Eve.

It's no coincidence that All About My Mother and All About Eve share similar titles. Almodovar cross-references the two films throughout and when Manuela (Cecilia Roth), the sad-eyed mother, goes on stage in the role of Stella for one performance of Streetcar, her rival accuses her of being another Eve Harrington from All About Eve.

Almodovar has always written strong and interesting roles for women. His most famous film is the hilariously telling Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, his biggest hit. He has even dedicated All About My Mother to women, and especially to actresses who have played actresses.

This time he has outdone himself in both characters and in the several wonderful performances he has gotten, which make All About My Mother well worth seeing. The film is a mix of Almodovar's heightened reality and a quieter view of the endurance of the human spirit, surviving despite grim adversity.

Roth is especially winning as the long-suffering Manuela, who has the courage to continue her quest for inner peace as she tries to grant her dead son Esteban's final request -- that he learn the identity and whereabouts of his father -- even as she tries to help others who are worse off than she. While undergoing her own trials, Manuela takes in the pregnant nun who is under even more pressure than she.

Marisa Paredes gives Roth a run for the money as Huma Rojo, the vibrant stage actress whose real-life romantic problems rival those of Tennessee Williams's troubled heroine, Blanche Dubois, whom she plays nightly to great applause. Huma puts on a good face for the public, but she's full of inner turmoil involving romantic problems.

Equally good, as both the film's comic relief and the one character who can find the hidden truths in all matters, is Madrid cabaret star Antonia San Juan as Manuela's wacky transvestite sidekick, Agrado. She can always be counted on for a funny aside or for some revelatory statement.

Yet All About My Mother also wobbles under Almodovar's trademark love of melodrama. The film's set-up borders on laborious. Rather than surprising us with discovering the real identity of Esteban's father late in the film, Almodovar telegraphs it from the very start with a photograph and references to the mysterious "Lola.'' By the time Lola turns up near the end of the movie, her appearance is only inevitable. The other high-heeled shoe has dropped.

A heartfelt scene between her and Manuela is supposed to bring tears . . . and it very nearly did for some at a preview showing where you could have heard a pin drop . . . but I realized that if you stepped back just a teensy bit from this on-screen moment, you could well be on the verge of nervous laughter.

Almodovar's excesses sometimes nearly derail his good intentions. Fortunately, there are enough that don't. And in All About My Mother, the pluses outweigh the minuses.


*** out of five
All About My Mother

Starring : Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz, Antonia San Juan, Candela Pena, Rosa Maria Sarda.

Producers: A Sony Pictures Classics release written and directed by Pedro Almodovar. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Rated : R, contains violence, nudity, profanity, adult themes.

Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

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