How did you get into Almodóvar? For me, it was a matter of maternal influence. Ever since catching Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown during its 1989 Portuguese release, she's been a devotee to the Spanish director. Even as her movie-going habits diminished, a new Almodóvar was always a reason to go to the theater, attend local festivals, and purchase physical media for re-watches down the road. Through those latter ones, I became acquainted with the filmmaker in my teens, learning to love his melodramas as much as my mom did. Though, of course, as a queer man, mine was a different connection to Almodóvar's cinema of complicated women and melodrama, bright colors and hot men.
To celebrate All About My Mother's 25th anniversary today, I revisited the film with the person responsible for turning young Cláudio into a fellow fan…
Though I won't go into detail, the past few weeks have been rough family-wise. Money and personal crises keep piling on top of each other, tears spilled everywhere. In such context, stopping to cry over a film may seem silly, but it's an odd comfort to get lost in that celluloid melodrama. For me and my mom, it was a nexus of catharsis and recognition. Early in the film, as Cecilia Roth's Manuela is having dinner with her son, it was impossible not to see something of ourselves on screen. There, gleaming under Almodóvar's gaze, we found another mother and (queer?) son considering the theatrical business of actresses.
Like us, they sat side by side on the sofa - her with an inquisitive look, me taking notes as I often am when re-watching familiar films. By the time they're at the theater door, more reflections manifested. After all, when we went to Madrid and Barcelona some years ago, my mom and I made sure to plan an Almodóvar circuit, especially focused on All About My Mother. We stepped into the same locations, walked the paths immortalized in the man's cinema, and even pondered the fates of his characters. Like Manuela and her boy, we stood under moonlight on the road beside the Teatro Bellas Artes. Thankfully, I didn't get hit by a car in the rain.
When I lived in Madrid for a while – during which I saw a Q&A with Marisa Paredes at the Cine Doré – I might have even felt like an Almodóvar heroine. And when the relationship that brought me to Spain crumbled into ruin, it was by re-watching his films that I learned to love the city again, divorcing it from the pain I know inevitably associated with its streets. I re-watched many of them with my mom, bonding over our shared love, and wounds healed one picture at a time. Almodóvar means a lot to me, and All About My Mother most of all. It remains a beacon of comforting weeps and maternal warmth that endures even while the world falls apart around me. I guess that's the power of cinema.
Do you have a similar connection with any of Almodóvar's films? With All About My Mother, perhaps?