January 25, 2000
Web posted at: 2:22 p.m. EST (1922 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- Most people either have an inclination toward Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodovar's brand of moviemaking or they don't. There isn't much room for in-betweens.

He's not unlike David Lynch in that respect. Both men have garnered cult followings, and they fully understand what their particular audience expects of them. Almodovar summed up his work himself with the title of his most popular film to date, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988).

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Though he's increasingly shied away from the near-slapstick that drove that movie, he's yet to alter his basic playing field. There's hardly a male to be found in his latest film, "All About My Mother," and the two who are featured most prominently also feature silicone breasts.

Almodovar is as flamboyantly gay as any popular filmmaker. His films are personal, extremely talky portraits of harried people who are likely to throw a hissy-fit at the drop of a hat. There are always gay men floating around, but Almodovar seems most interested in understanding women, straight or gay. Histrionics aside, what people seem to respond to most about his films is their grandiosity. They're half cartoon and half soap opera. Gaudy sets and tacky clothing shout his over-the-top sensibility as if he's in a panic, and violins swell from out of nowhere whenever someone breaks into a crying jag.

Many critics have compared him to Douglas Sirk, an American director from the 1950s who also used to crank the melodrama up to 11, never mind that the results had nothing to do with reality.

In Sirk's near-insane "Written on the Wind" (1956), a rich old man actually dies of a heart attack while his daughter dances a lascivious, bongo-driven cha-cha-cha. More of a post-modernist, Almodovar knows full well when he's being absurd. Sirk seems to have only pretended that he knew when he became a cult figure several years after the fact.

So you'd better prepare yourself when you watch your first Almodovar movie. He shoots for colorful, tongue-in-cheek soaps, but often ends up with garish tedium. "All About My Mother," though far less exaggerated than much of his work, is a mixed bag that's been getting incredible reviews. Some people are even lobbying for it to get a best picture nomination at this year's Oscars.

Go ahead if it means that "The Green Mile" will wind up empty-handed, but I'm hard pressed to tell you why "All About My Mother" is garnering such an enthusiastic response. It's not awful. It's just -- to quote Bruce Springsteen -- "talk-talk-talk-talk, till you lose your patience." Conversations blend into confessions that blend into tears, then the tears blend into more conversations. And here come the violins. And here comes another confession.

The overheated plot is certainly preposterous enough, not to mention complex. A hospital administrator named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) attends a stage performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire" with her teen-age son, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). After the show, Manuela sees Esteban get struck and killed by a car while he's trying to secure an autograph from Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), one of the show's actresses. It's emblematic of Almodovar's style that all this tragedy takes place on the boy's birthday.

Manuela promised Esteban that she would finally tell him about his never-seen father later that evening. But he, of course, never gets to hear the story, and she goes somewhat off the deep end. She quits her job and travels from Madrid to Barcelona to find the boy's wayward father.

It turns out that Manuela met her ex -- here's a coincidence -- during a production of "Streetcar" in which he played Stanley and she played Stella. But he wound up getting fake breasts and running around with men a couple of years after their marriage. Even in Almodovar's world, that's the kind of thing that can break up a heterosexual relationship.

Manuela doesn't find her former husband (not right off the bat, anyway), but she does stumble upon La Agrado (the superb Antonia San Juan), an old transvestite friend who's still turning open-air tricks with a gang of hookers on the outskirts of town.

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While hanging around with La Agarado, Manuela meets and befriends a beautiful nun named Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz). Rosa happens to be pregnant and HIV positive. Eventually, Manuela hooks up with Huma, the actress from the show, and becomes her assistant. Huma's lover (Candela Pena), another of the show's actresses, is addicted to heroin. This affords Manuela the opportunity to step in and once again perform the part of Stella in "Streetcar." Allusions to gay icon Bette Davis and "All About Eve" (1950) are thrown in for good measure.

Your response to the film will hinge on how much contrived anxiety you're inclined to accept. All of the actresses do superlative work. And, as I've already said, San Juan is tremendous. La Agarado is a rarity in Almodovar's oeuvre, a fully rounded human being whose situation is portrayed as bittersweet rather than borderline laughable.

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One scene, in which he semi-humorously tells his life story to a captive audience, is enough to generate Oscar buzz. If the Academy is hoping to award this film, that's where they should be looking. Almodovar likes to turn the ridiculous into the populist. La Agarado, with his rueful sense of humor and kind-but-damaged heart, is one of his finest creations. The rest of the film, unfortunately, plays like a tamed-down version of the same-old same-old.

"All About my Mother" implies a lot more than it shows, aside from a sequence in which various men circle the hookers in their vehicles, trolling for some action. The heroin is also kept behind closed doors. There's blunt conversation about non-mainstream sexual practices, but it should be noted that one person's "adventure" is another person's day-to-day life. Rated R. 101 minutes.