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IMDbPro

All About My Mother

Original title: Todo sobre mi madre
  • 19991999
  • RR
  • 1h 41m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
98K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,946
1,573
All About My Mother (1999)
Watch Tráiler [OV]
Play trailer1:52
2 Videos
92 Photos
Drama
Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-winning comedy (Best Foreign Film, 1999) about a bereaved mother, and overwrought actress, her jealous lover and a pregnant nun.Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-winning comedy (Best Foreign Film, 1999) about a bereaved mother, and overwrought actress, her jealous lover and a pregnant nun.Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-winning comedy (Best Foreign Film, 1999) about a bereaved mother, and overwrought actress, her jealous lover and a pregnant nun.
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
98K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,946
1,573
    • Pedro Almodóvar
    • Pedro Almodóvar
  • Stars
    • Cecilia Roth
    • Marisa Paredes
    • Candela Peña
    • Pedro Almodóvar
    • Pedro Almodóvar
  • Stars
    • Cecilia Roth
    • Marisa Paredes
    • Candela Peña
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 261User reviews
    • 90Critic reviews
    • 87Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Won 1 Oscar

    Videos2

    Tráiler [OV]
    Trailer 1:52
    Watch Tráiler [OV]
    All About My Mother
    Trailer 0:31
    Watch All About My Mother

    Photos92

    Marisa Paredes and Cecilia Roth in All About My Mother (1999)
    Cecilia Roth and Eloy Azorín in All About My Mother (1999)
    Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz at an event for All About My Mother (1999)
    Pedro Almodóvar at an event for All About My Mother (1999)
    All About My Mother (1999)
    All About My Mother (1999)
    16 x 21 Mini Movie Poster
    Quad movie poster 40 x 30
    Pedro Almodóvar in Matador (1986)
    All About My Mother (1999)
    All About My Mother (1999)
    All About My Mother (1999)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Cecilia Roth
    Cecilia Roth
    • Manuela
    Marisa Paredes
    Marisa Paredes
    • Huma Rojo
    Candela Peña
    Candela Peña
    • Nina
    Antonia San Juan
    Antonia San Juan
    • Agrado
    • (as Antonia Sanjuan)
    Penélope Cruz
    Penélope Cruz
    • Hermana Rosa
    Rosa Maria Sardà
    Rosa Maria Sardà
    • Madre de Rosa
    • (as Rosa María Sardá)
    Fernando Fernán Gómez
    Fernando Fernán Gómez
    • Padre de Rosa
    Fernando Guillén
    Fernando Guillén
    • Doctor en 'Un tranvía llamado Deseo'
    Toni Cantó
    • Lola
    Carlos Lozano
    • Mario
    Eloy Azorín
    Eloy Azorín
    • Esteban
    Manuel Morón
    Manuel Morón
    • Doctor 1
    José Luis Torrijo
    José Luis Torrijo
    • Doctor 2
    Juan José Otegui
    Juan José Otegui
    • Ginecólogo
    Carmen Balagué
    Carmen Balagué
    Malena Gutiérrez
    Malena Gutiérrez
    • Malena
    Yael Barnatán
    Yael Barnatán
    • Yael
    • (as Yael Bernatán)
    Carme Fortuny
    • Carmen
      • Pedro Almodóvar
      • Pedro Almodóvar
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Agrado's monologue was based on a real life event. When the electronic system of an Argentinian theater failed, the director suspended the show. Actress Lola Membrives decided to give the news to the audience and make them an offer: if they'd stay, they could listen to the narration of her life.
    • Quotes

      Agrado: Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, ma'am. And one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being.

    • Alternate versions
      Three minutes are cut from the US version. The total running time of the Spanish version is 104 minutes.
    • Connections
      Featured in At the Movies: Instinct/The Loss of Sexual Innocence/Limbo (1999)
    • Soundtracks
      Gorrión
      Written by Dino Saluzzi

      Performed by Dino Saluzzi (bandoneon), Marc Johnson and José Saluzzi

      Courtesy of ECM Records

      (from "Cité de la musique" 1997)

    User reviews261

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    Does this emperor have any clothes?
    One thing is for certain: you sure can't accuse Pedro Almodovar's `All About My Mother' of narrative timidity. In its relatively brief 102-minute running time, it provides a literal smorgasbord of sensational plot elements: a fatal car accident, a dead teenaged son, organ transplantation, transvestite prostitutes, lesbianism, pregnant nuns, drug addiction, AIDS, Alzheimer's, and death by childbirth – more than enough juicy elements to warm the heart of any lover of classic melodrama or daytime soap operas. Even if the film had dealt with only half of these issues, it would still be a challenge to maintain some sort of overall focus. As it is, we spend most of the movie staring in head-scratching amazement at the sheer audacity of the enterprise.

    Certainly, the critics have not been stingy in heaping effusive praise on the work and both the Motion Picture Academy and the Foreign Press Golden Globe committee have echoed that praise by bestowing on the film their coveted awards for Best Foreign Language Film of 1999. But does the film really merit all these critical hosannas and kudos? Not by a long shot! Jaded as we may be by the deadening predictability and lack of originality that, sadly, define the majority of films released each year, it is, nevertheless, still incumbent upon us not to be bowled over by a film that takes the alternate path of undisciplined bizarreness. `All About My Mother' cries desperately to be a moving and important study of women's roles in society, but, by trying to compress so many of the eccentricities of life into one story, the film leaves us more incredulous and perplexed than stimulated and touched.

    One element does succeed brilliantly, however, and that is the outstanding performance of Cecilia Roth in the leading role of Manuela, an attractive 38-year old mother who, upon the sudden death of her child, is compelled to return to the dark past she long ago fled and to seek some sort of redemption. She provides us with the warm center of human compassion this film so desperately needs to keep it from becoming a completely clinical exercise in absurdity. Streamlined perhaps, her story might have made for a fascinating and incisive film. But Almodovar is so busy loading up his film with rather obviously drawn parallels that we really never believe a minute of it. The film is rife with ineffectual and pretentious allusions to `All About Eve' and `A Streetcar Named Desire,' as the movie characters' lives take vaguely similar paths to those of the characters found in those works. And the finale, in which Manuela's maternal affections find a new object to latch on to, seems coy and artificial – an attempt to leave the audience on an emotional high after all the misery and heartbreak it has witnessed in the course of the film. The whole enterprise, ultimately, seems hopelessly artificial.

    That artificiality at least justifies the gorgeous look of the film. Almodovar has, as always, splashed across the screen his usual array of brightly colored walls, furniture and clothing that makes the film seem to exist in a world located somewhere between realism and surrealism. This bold visual palette is always one of the joyous fringe benefits that accompanies the watching of an Almodovar film.

    Unfortunately, in this case at least, he hasn't created a film with a story, cast of characters or theme to match in quality or intensity the glorious, many-hued background he provides. Despite all its many awards and its extraordinary critical acclaim, `All About My Mother' doesn't hold a candle to Almodovar's truly wonderful previous film, `Live Flesh.' Check that one out instead and see the difference.
    helpful•8
    3
    • Buddy-51
    • Jul 7, 2000

    FAQ1

    • What sex is the person who plays Agrado?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 31, 2000 (United States)
      • Spain
      • France
      • Sony Pictures Classics
      • Spanish
      • Catalan
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
    • Production companies
      • El Deseo
      • Renn Productions
      • France 2 Cinéma
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 41 minutes
      • Dolby Digital

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