Tender 'Mother' reveals honesty

By Laura Flyer

Daily Arts Writer

Pedro Almodovar is back with his latest successful cinematic enterprise, "All About My Mother." He definitely provides a surfaced description of the film, calling it a "screwball drama." Rather, "All About My Mother" is intensely probing, magnanimously honest and touchingly praiseworthy of the unbreakable bonds of family and friends.

Almodovar's cast is bereft of popularized, glamorized stars; they are instead people who have been close to him throughout his life. His method of choosing actors may seem skewed, but it's not as though he made the wrong selections. His so-called "family" of actors are as individually unique as they are talented. For Almodovar, the cinema isn't a battleground to duel over the most flawlessly-skinned actor of the Hollywood lot. His picks are as honest and real as they come.

Honesty, indeed, stacks up falsity and triumphs. There is Manuela (Cecilia Roth) a hard-nosed woman who carries with her the weight of two deceased family members. Leaving her memories behind in Madrid, she attempts to start anew in Barcelona, hoping to settle some "unfinished business" with the husband who estranged her and her child (unborn at the time).

Immediately upon arriving she seeks out her old friend, La Agrado (her nickname due to her "agreeable nature" - a character played by Spanish nightclub performer Antonia San Juan). A cab takes Manuela to a circus-like encirclement of cars known as "The Field" - a situational hub for nightly prostitution. After rescuing Agrado from harassment by one of her customers, Manuela doesn't even flinch upon seeing her bloodied friend amidst such an environment. The two friends embrace and engage in chatty conversation, wholly engrossed in one another's comforting presence.

Agrado introduces Manuela to Sister Rosa, a seemingly devout nun who is committed to helping the disadvantaged. Though Rosa isn't as bull-headed as Manuela, she shares the same filial piety and lack of pretensions. She also is not as innocent as one would expect; it turns out that she and Manuela both shared the same man (before he became a woman) - Lola, who is also the bearer of Manuela's lost son, Esteban.

Manuela, with the memory of her son still fresh in her mind, seeks emotional refuge in clinging to the theatrical production "A Streetcar Named Desire." The play is like a Shakespearean play-within-a-play, mirroring the tensions in "All About My Mother." Externally, it signals a flood of memories for Manuela; internally, it deals with characters in situations akin to those surrounding Manuela.

When Rosa becomes pregnant, Manuela does not hesitate to devote her energies into helping her. Rosa's mother, however, continually makes her relationship with Rosa difficult because she refuses to see her daughter in a true light, always begrudging her alternate choices in life. What makes Manuela and Rosa seem so fierce and enviable is not that they contrast those who judge others superficially, but that they consider those fakes a hostile influence on their well-being. Rosa does not waste her time bickering with her mother over issues that the elder will never come to understand. Likewise, Manuela refuses to have others undermine and condescend to her because of how she chose to lead her life.

Almodovar does not leave behind traces of humor so redolent in his 1988 film, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" in "All About My Mother." These characters endure multiple hardships, but they never forget about the importance of enjoying life's little pleasures. Almodovar puns on sexual innuendoes and mocks others' often heavy-handed perspectives. But most of all, the insufferable Blanche Dubois or Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), the actress who seems to mold into such a character, always have and will continue to "depend upon the kindness of strangers."