All About My Mother

Year: 1999

Grade: C-

Country: Spain

Director: Almodovar

Review

i don’t like pedro almodovar, that’s official. he just doesn’t talk about anything in his movies that interests me, and, as i’ve mentioned before, it’s not enough for me for a movie to have an interesting visual style or structure….it has to have characters or a story that resonates with me on some level. i guess what it comes down to is that i’m just more into “guy” movies, and almodovar doesn’t make guy movies. all the movies i’ve seen by him have been either too much about women or too much about sex. the latter being the major reason i don’t like movies like “last tango in paris.” though that also had marlon brando in it and i don’t seem to like him very much. which brings me back to all about my mother since “a streetcar named desire” played a big part in the film. i fucking hate a streetcar named desire. but i digress…all about my mother had some interesting elements. the integration of streetcar and all about eve and the way in which the characters sort of relive those stories was interesting, but not compelling. the use of color was interesting, but i didn’t understand the point of it. there was a lot of red, but people of all types wore red so it wasn’t a way of distinguishing personalities. most of the colors were primary so maybe this is an indication that these characters are archetypes. when the main character moved to barcelona her apartment seemed to have less color than her previous home – perhaps echoing the loss of life she experienced. the movie was made well enough, but had nothing to offer me. it’s probably the equivalent of most women watching a war film – too one-sided and thus not very relateable(?).