Word: scene
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...about My Mother opens with dramatic cinematic technique as the camera in close focus follows an IV line. The sense of determinism continues to operate as an amorphous force in every subsequent scene. The next shot is a scene in an impeccably furnished apartment in Madrid. Manuela, an organ-transplant nurse played by Cecilia Roth (a luminary of the foreign film industry, with an uncanny ability to evoke tears) sits watching All About Eve with her son, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). Esteban is turning 17 the next day, and his eyes seem bright with literary genius and joie d'vivre...
...dream world of the next few scenes vanishes the next night, a rainy and cold evening and Esteban's birthday. Affonso Beato, director of photography, employs clever technique interposing dot matrix drawings of women in red over Manuela's image. Similarly, the night's coldness is reflected in camera angles of rain on the windows and fog in mirrors. One can almost feel the chill of the evening on one's shoulders. This clammy sensation follows the viewer as Manuel and Esteban observe a performance of Streetcar Named Desire, a play holding special significance to Manuela. Twenty years before, Manuela...
...Esteban's father, a transvestite originally an Esteban himself but now Lola the Pioneer. The depiction of one train moving forward and another train moving backward, when coupled with Manuela's voice-over of the history and purpose for her journey detract from Almodvar's intention that the scene serve as a point of transition and departure. In an almost music-video-like sequence, a distraught Manuela peruses the local transvestite meat market. She does not find Lola, but she does come upon La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), or the agreeable one, Manuela's transsexual friend. La Agrado...
...film's artistry borders on the over-done as the melodrama envelops the audience. The wallpaper patterns are reminiscent of '60s acid tripping posters, and the rooms seem too perfectly contrived. While red is normally a color used on camera to draw attention to an actress in a scene or emphasize a particular state of emotion in a drama, the women in All About My Mother are continuously cloaked in red. Thus, dress provides no clues as to where scenes of tension replace scenes of relaxation. Visually, each scene has an obnoxious similarity to the one before. Despite the melodrama...
...screen that does not belong to one of the three main characters, and the bulk of the film was shot on just a few sets, adding to the sense of claustrophobia. The smallness of the movie goes beyond that, though--in what is intended to be a pivotal scene, Bendrix rushes out of his house to catch Sarah before she leaves town. But instead of sprinting down the streets in a romantic dash to his beloved, he just trots across a little patch of greenery in time to intercept her. It couldn't be more than 20 yards; Fiennes barely...