111-12FINISHED, 1999, BBBBB, Pedro Almodovar

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) (1999)

Posted by Bil Antoniou on

PEDRO ALMODOVAR

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BBBBB.   

Spain/France, 1999.  El Deseo, Renn Productions, France 2 Cinéma, Vía Digital.  Screenplay by Pedro Almodovar.  Cinematography by .  Music by .  Production Design by .  Costume Design by , .  Film Editing by .  Academy Awards 1999.  Boston Film Critics Awards 1999.  Cannes Film Festival 1999.  Golden Globe Awards 1999.   Independent Spirit Awards 1999.  National Board of Review Awards 1999.    New York Film Critics Awards 1999.

Pedro Almodovar offers us his best work yet with this touching and emotionally lyrical film about a nurse ( in a world class performance) who leaves Madrid for Barcelona following a personal tragedy, looking to find the man with whom she has a story with loose ends.  Instead of finding him, however, she befriends a down-on-her-luck transsexual (), an HIV-positive nun (Penelope Cruz) and a tragically unhappy actress () with a drug-addicted girlfriend (). Almodovar once again gives dignity and grace to characters who would be seen as nothing more than sideshow freaks for someone else, creating real emotional life that overcomes the sometimes unimaginative plot. It has humour, charm and oh so much sexy elegance.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s