Todo sobre mi madre / All about my mother starts very well with an introduction of Manuela Coleman (refers to La flor de mi secreto, another Almodóvar-movie) and her son Esteban. Esteban documents his mother's life as a writer, hence the title of the movie. When pursuing an autograph of stage actress Huma Esteban dies (the car accident well executed by the way). His heart is transplanted to another person, his mother as a hospital worker is able to track that person down. After following her son's heart to La Coruña she follows her own heart back to Barcelona, where her personal history really lies with a background as prostitute. She meets Agrado, a former co-worker, and Sister Rosa. She frequently visits the play "A Streetcar named Desire" and finally meets Huma and drug-addicted Nina back-stage. After the principal story is set out, many interactions and twists will of course follow.
Pedro Almodóvar makes clever use of several devices to lift this out of the ordinary: Actors in the play being replaced by other actors in the movie. He uses red (and black) to signify that lives and burdens are passed on from one character to the other. The story frequently shifts focus to keep us interested. The performance of A Streetcar Named Desire and references to All About Eve (among others) all meant as play-in-the-play and to comment the story as a meta-story. The play reflects real life, but is also an abstraction of it. The story takes place mainly in Barcelona, synonymous for modernity.
From the strong beginning onwards Almodóvar is however unable to maintain the high level he started with. It is just not well-structured enough when seen as a whole and therefore the quality is uneven. It all ends a bit like superior melodrama on soap level, and he can do much better than that.
But Almodóvar has great visual talent: The way the opening credits roll for example, but also Manuela leaving and returning Barcelona by train in a short shot of two trains. From this he went on to explore all positives mentioned here to make the far superior Hable con ella / Talk to Her and La mala educación / Bad Education, both better structured and more visually imaginative.
Pedro Almodóvar makes clever use of several devices to lift this out of the ordinary: Actors in the play being replaced by other actors in the movie. He uses red (and black) to signify that lives and burdens are passed on from one character to the other. The story frequently shifts focus to keep us interested. The performance of A Streetcar Named Desire and references to All About Eve (among others) all meant as play-in-the-play and to comment the story as a meta-story. The play reflects real life, but is also an abstraction of it. The story takes place mainly in Barcelona, synonymous for modernity.
From the strong beginning onwards Almodóvar is however unable to maintain the high level he started with. It is just not well-structured enough when seen as a whole and therefore the quality is uneven. It all ends a bit like superior melodrama on soap level, and he can do much better than that.
But Almodóvar has great visual talent: The way the opening credits roll for example, but also Manuela leaving and returning Barcelona by train in a short shot of two trains. From this he went on to explore all positives mentioned here to make the far superior Hable con ella / Talk to Her and La mala educación / Bad Education, both better structured and more visually imaginative.