All About My Mother 1999, Rated R Columbia/Tristar Home Video

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Starring Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, et al. Released to DVD on July 11, 2000.

Though he'd been working on the fringes of mainstream American acceptance since 1988's Oscar nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, writer/director Pedro Almodovar never quite achieved breakthrough success (or an Oscar win) until last year's All About My Mother. It's no wonder, though, because this film is Almodovar's most accessible work and one that maintains the director's quirky style while providing characters with genuine heart. Cecilia Roth stars as Manuela, a medical worker whose teenage son is killed near the beginning of the film. This sets Manuela on a journey to find her son's birth father, who had left the pair long ago. Manuela ends up crossing paths with a variety of different folks including an HIV-positive nun, a self-absorbed actress and a transsexual prostitute. The humor in All About My Mother comes naturally from the characters themselves, and the movie itself is formed around Almodovar's love for women. This is a gorgeously shot, well-acted, tragic-comic masterpiece, and easily one of the least daunting foreign films on the shelves.