All About My Mother by Pedro Almodovar By Sameer, Ryan and Laura

Plot Synopsis “Manuela is a single mother of Madrid, who brings her only son Esteban to a Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire for his 17th birthday. After the play, they wait outside to get the autograph of one of the actresses. He doesnt receive it and proceeds to chase their taxi down and gets hit by a car and dies. Manuela decides to go to Barcelona to find Estebans father, a transvestite named Lola, who doesnt know that he is a father. She finds her old friend Agrado who is also a transvestite. Manuela needs a job so Agrado brings her to Rosa, a nun, who is three months pregnant with Lolas child, and contracted AIDS from Lola. Manuela goes to the same production of A Streetcar Named Desire and meets the actress her son was chasing after, Huma. Manuela helps take care of Rosa, and works for Huma. After Rosa has the baby, she dies from AIDS, and Lola comes back and is also dying from AIDS and meets his new son who Manuela names Esteban. Manuela heads back to Madrid the same way she did before, with a baby son.” – IMDB.com

Comparisons with Talk To Her Narrative revolves around women and it is fairly complicated. The characters have problems (hard to establish). Represents men in a negative light – sexual High key lighting- colourful in Barcelona compared to Madrid. The predominant theme of obsession, is accentuated by the theatre and with the actress in red which would connote danger and foreshadow his death. She’d undergo metamorphosis after the two years, after she spent time with Manuela she would change, as she no longer dons red and has changed her hair color to brunette. Compared with Benigno obsession with Alicia; infatuated by her.

Continued… Deals with sensitive subjects- AIDS, loss of a son, prostitution Use of expositional dialogue, not very enigma- obvious Intertextuality – All About Eve is in the film, and the film replicates the plot where Manuela steals a role from a actress. Also a strong focus on Streetcar Named Desire. Combined with Talk To Her, it is clear that Alodovar takes influence from the golden age Hollywood to the late 60’s, considering the Psycho and Sleeping Beauty references. Strong and independent women, very female orientated. The males in the film are either sexually deviant or are transsexual, and are treated like women.

Continued… Time jumps About sex, no sex is shown. About what you don’t see, links with the rape in Talk To Her. Rain = Bad. Foreshadows tragic scenes. This can be seen as a pathetic fallacy, where weather affects the mood. Camera is static, tripod used throughout in both films. Mise-en-Scene is very influential, relying on performance Non diegetic sound emphasises the drama of the scene. Mother and son relationship in both films is very oedipal- e.g the relationship between Esteban and his mother is very close and the same can be said for the relationship between Benigno and his mother in Talk to her.

fin Almodovar is an Auteur, he is known to tell a story through his films and this can be observed with themes of mother-son relationships and stories of women in general. Personally we think Almodovar deals with controversial subjects and it forces the audience to think about it critically and his content sort of blurs the line between morality and immorality, the audience is forced to be ambivalent to the characters and their tribulations.