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...About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar's Oscar-winning film of 1999, identity is not a stable character trait. A nurse becomes a prostitute, a nun becomes pregnant, a prostitute becomes a saint and several men become women. The much-anticipated stage adaptation of the film, now playing at the Old Vic Theatre in London until Nov. 24, doesn't settle on a single form either. Containing a film sequence and several plays-within-the-play, it is, like its transgender characters, a type of crossover - a trans-genre. What it wants to say through its densely layered metadrama...
...theatrical adaptation, the first Almodóvar has approved in 20 years, introduces a narrative voice absent from the film - Manuela's dead son Esteban, whose periodic, ghostly appearances both nag and reassure the characters, in much the same contradictory way that Manuela's grief haunts and comforts her. When Agrado delivers the great Almodóvarian declaration that "a woman is more authentic the more she looks like what she has dreamed for herself," the cruel subtext is that Manuela's vision of herself as a mother - like her son's ghost - remains forever out of reach...
...traffic congestion and other problems caused by the film's production, "Allen's film is no different than any big budget project," notes Steven Guest, also with the mayor's office. "Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother shut down Ferran Street a couple of years ago, and television shoots close streets every day. The only complaints I've seen have been in the media." For now, Barcelona's relationship with Allen can cool off a bit. On Monday, cast and crew began shooting in Oviedo, the less cosmopolitan capital of the region of Asturias, eight hours...
...single mom (Penélope Cruz, above left) hears rumors that her dead mother (Carmen Maura) is haunting their hometown. This unlocks closets full of family secrets and director Pedro Almodóvar's unique mix of earthy wit and fire. So maybe he's not working at quite the apogee of emotion and cinematic daring of his All About My Mother and Talk to Her. That makes Volver only about the sixth best film of the past decade...
...ungrateful to the opportunities I get here," Cruz says. "But women are still a bit suppressed and invalidated in this industry in this country. I feel like I get healthy when I go back to Europe and work where it's more equal." Which brings us back to Almodóvar's world, one in which women dominate. Volver took Almodóvar six years to write. When he started, he envisioned Cruz in the smaller part of the daughter. As time passed, "I suddenly felt that I wanted something bigger," he says. "I thought, Why not make her the mother...