1999 Winner, All About My Mother

All About My Mother

Director:  Pedro Almodóvar

Distributed by:  Sony Pictures Classics

Released:  April 1999

Country:  Spain

“We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it.” --Roger Ebert

I always respected the work of Roger Ebert, critic for the Chicago Sun Times and the shorter, dumpier half of Siskel & Ebert, as much as I have any film critic.  I didn’t always agree with what he wrote outside of his reviews, but I always found him to be a great mixture of the scholar and the regular guy.  So after seeing All About My Mother, a movie that for me made no sense as an art film or as a story, hoping to get some insight, I checked out his review.  Ebert gave the film three and a half stars (out of four).  All I can say is, you can’t be right every time.

Ebert said of this movie, “You don't know where to position yourself while you're watching a film like All About My Mother, and that's part of the appeal: Do you take it seriously, like the characters do, or do you notice the bright colors and flashy art decoration, the cheerful homages to Tennessee Williams and  All About Eve (1950) and see it as a parody?”  And I say, well NO, not knowing if it is a heartfelt drama or a screwball satire means the director doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

Agrado and Manuela

Okay, a brief description:  Manuela and her teenage son go see the play A Streetcar Named Desire at a theater in Argentina.  The son wants an autograph from the main actress, Huma, but gets thwacked by a car on the way and ends up posthumously and involuntarily giving his organs away.  Manuela decides it’s time for her to go back to her native Barcelona to tell the father, from whom she is estranged. During her quest to find the deadbeat dad, she befriends several characters along the way, including a young, pregnant nun-to-be played by a familiar face, Penelope Cruz.  Manuela meets up with Dad toward the end of the film to tell him the bad news.

Now I’m not dumb, but I couldn’t understand why he walked like a woman but talked like a man.  Well, it seems sometime after ditching Manuela years ago, the father became a woman called Lola.  But just because Lola did the old switcheroo doesn’t mean she didn’t like to still do some guy things once in a while, no sir!  Turns out it was Lola that recently caused young, innocent little Penelope Cruz to have a not-so immaculate conception.  In dealing with the crisis, Manuela also gets support from her transvestite prostitute chum Agrado as well as Huma and Huma’s druggie girlfriend.  A Frank Capra movie this ain’t!

You see?  It's all perfectly normal!

I previously reviewed the Iranian film and 2011 BFF Winner A Separation and commented on how despite the cultural chasm between the characters and me, I felt great empathy for just about every person in that movie.  In All About My Mother, I felt nothing approaching empathy for anyone.  I didn’t understand their motives nor their actions, and felt like everyone but Manuela basically acted on only their own impulses and self-interests.  Everybody seemed miserable and no character seemed to have any understanding of why or how to fix it.  Characters make choices in films, and you don't have to agree with those choices.  But if you don't relate with them on any level, you cannot root for them.  Roger Ebert, if he was able to see the world the way Manuela, Penelope Cruz, and Lola see it, had a more generous sense of empathy than I do.

The Title:  Todo sobre mi madre.  This is a play on the Bette Davis film, All About Eve.  That’s a movie that is completely different than the movies I usually watch, yet it is a dang good one.

Oh Brunhilde!  Be my wuv!

The Culture:  Apparently, in late 90’s Spain, girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.  It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world . . . except for Lola.

Agenda Danger:  This film was released in 1999, and things have dramatically changed culturally since then.  This film features an actor who plays a woman who was (or still is?) a man, and an actress who plays a woman who was a man.  Not to mention a to-be nun who was impregnated by a woman who used to be a man.  I’m not sure what the filmmaker is saying here, but he sure was ahead of the curve.  You see, Millennials, in Olden Times this kind of stuff was usually strictly of the comedic variety:  Milton Berle, Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, Bosom Buddies, and Bug Bunny as Brunhilde were what most Americans thought of in terms of what was called “cross-dressing.”  Nowadays, everyone is very serious about the topic and such jokes cannot be made without peril.  As far as I could tell (see Ebert’s quote above), All About My Mother’s cross-dressing is not done for laughs.  But I couldn’t be sure of that.

Best Picture that year:  American Beauty.

Rating:  To be clear, Roger Ebert liked this movie.  But I give it a full thumbs-down.

1950 Winner, The Walls of Malapaga

The Walls of Malapaga

Director:  René Clément

Distributed by:  Films International

Released:  March 1950 (in U.S.)

Country:  France/Italy

To this point, beginning with the 2015 Best Foreign Film Son of Saul going backward to 1950, I've been able to locate and watch, either from a library or online, every Best Foreign Film with English subtitles.  1951 winner The Walls of Malapaga is my first fail, as it were.  I looked on Amazon and Overstock and eBay; and I looked on every rare film website and library site I knew of; and I even asked for help on Reddit.  Nothing.

However, my efforts weren’t a complete loss, as good ol’ YouTube has the French film posted . . . but with Portuguese subtitles instead of English.  I don’t speak Portuguese, but I did take five years of French in high school and college, so I know some colors, numbers, swear words, and food words.  I also know how to ask where the swimming pool, beach, and bathroom are—pretty much the essentials if you go abroad.  But past that I’m pretty lost.  Still, my goal has been to watch them all and review them all, so I watched every bit of the 90-minute film, directed by René Clément, who directed the wonderful Best Foreign Film Forbidden Games from two years later.  You’ll have to give me a little slack on this one.  Here goes:

Pierre and Marta

Our story starts with a guy on a ship, and IMDb tells me his name is Pierre.  Pierre gets off and it is apparent he has a toothache because he holds his mouth and utters a “Zut alors” a time or deux while walking down the street.  He gets to the dentist, who seems to fix him up in no time; then he pops into a restaurant and makes eyes at a waitress named Marta (again, thanks, IMDb!).  He can’t pay his bill but they let him go anyway.  It’s about then we realize Pierre is somehow wanted by the law because the cops are after him.  He gets away and eventually spends the night at Marta’s house, where he meets Cecchina, Marta’s young daughter, or else just some random girl that seems to be living with Marta.  Suddenly . . . . a chicken falls out of the ceiling, which leads Pierre to decide to take a nap.  The chicken falls out of the ceiling again, although I am uncertain if it was the same chicken.  I’m positive it is a chicken, by the way, because the word poulet is used several times and I remember that one from high school.  Merci, Pere Petkash!

Cecchina about to smart off

The next morning, Marta walks her daughter to school as a cop follows her.  Next thing you know, the cop is grabbing Marta, but a nun from the school fights him off.  Marta goes back home, where Pierre is, and has an argument with a guy, either a judge or her husband?  The daughter comes in and realizes her mom is hiding Pierre, but plays along.  Mom shows Cecchina a dress she got for her; then the daughter smarts off and mom smacks her across the chops.   The French of 1949 apparently believe in corporal punishment.

So for some reason, despite the cops on Pierre's trail, they are all okay to walk around down by the pier and Marta pops in the restaurant, maybe to get her check?  The policeman is still looking for Pierre and goes into talk to the dentist to see if the dentist can fill him in on his whereabouts.  The policeman goes to the restaurant too, but they pretend or don’t pretend to have no idea where he is.  Meanwhile, Pierre seems to feel free to walk anywhere he wants, so it would seem he’s not really worried about the police all that much. 

In Genoa, this is how we say Shut Up.

At some point, while they are all sitting around at home, the daughter runs away, I guess thinking she’ll rat out Pierre.  Pierre and Marta look for her.  Much to their chagrin, it leads to Pierre getting nabbed by the cops and Marta and her daughter walking away.  Someone shouts, "Pierre!  Pierre!"  Suddenly, out of nowhere a big fat “FINE” is next and that’s the end of that.  Talk about a shock ending.

If there are The Walls of Malapaga fanatics out there that want to disagree with me on my synopsis, I am open to it, but I have to tell you, I know that was a chicken falling out the ceiling that I saw.  It was suggested that I look to Wikipedia or other websites to get a better handle on what happened, but the pickings were slim online.  Wikipedia’s total summary goes like this:  “[Jean] Gabin is a French criminal, Pierre Arrignon, on the run who finds himself in Genoa, Italy, and falls in love with a local girl, Marta Manfredini (played by Isa Miranda). The film is set in Italy but the dialogue is primarily in French.”  Zut!  No spoilers in that summary.

The film's startling conclusion

The Title: Au-delà des grilles, or Beyond the Gates.  Urbandictionary.com says a “malapaga” is someone who owes money or is a bad credit risk.  So it would stand to reason that Pierre is caught in the end for owing people money, especially given his track record of not paying for his food at the restaurant.

The culture:  What I knew about Genoa before this movie was that Christopher Columbus was born here and that’s pretty much it.  Now I know they have defensive walls around the city and that some people keep their chickens in the ceiling.

Agenda danger:  “Crime does not pay” isn’t really a bad message, except that all I know Pierre did wrong is to be delinquent in not paying for his meal and possibly for some dental work.

Best Picture that year:  All About Eve

Rating:  I guess “Incomplete” is the best grade I can give this one, but I can again recommend Clément's earlier film, Forbidden Games.

1959 Winner, Black Orpheus

Black Orpheus

Director:        Marcel Camus

Distributed by:  Lopert Pictures

Released:  June 1959

Country:  Brazil

Brazil’s only winner of the Best Foreign Film award looks, sounds, and feels like you would think a movie set in Rio would look, sound, and feel.  Not that I know much about Brazil or about movies about Brazil.  If you pressed me, I can think of only two films with Brazil as a setting:  The Boys from Brazil from 1978 and Blame in on Rio from 1984, both which I watched while still in high school.  The Boy from Brazil seemed cool because it was about uncovering a plot to clone a bunch of Hitlers using der Fuehrer’s DNA.  Blame it on Rio, which was one of those films I caught on HBO without my parents knowing it, was even cooler since it featured the bare breasts of actress Michelle Johnson.  Neither movie, in fact, is really very good, but both attracted the sensibilities of the 17-year-old I was at the time.

The Best Foreign Film from 1959 is a very different movie from either of these two films, but it is one that is meant to appeal to a certain sensibility, one that could not be further from that of 17-year-old Me.  Black Orpheus isn’t a musical, per se, in that the characters don’t sing their lines to each other, but music is at the center of it.  Specifically, it’s a film that incorporates the music and emotions of the Brazilian Carnival, that country’s version of Mardi Gras, with the dancing and costumes of the annual festival.

Orfeu wooing Eurydice

The story is simple and based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Don't worry, I had never heard of it either.  Orfeu is a trolley conductor and we are introduced to him when he gives Eurydice, a girl from out of town visiting her cousin, a ride.  Orfeu hits on Eurydice bigtime from the beginning, even though he is engaged to another girl, the somewhat possessive Mira.  We don’t know it at first, but Eurydice has fled her home town to avoid this strange stalker who dresses in a skeleton costume and won’t leave her alone.  Eurydice sees this guy as Death and doesn’t want him to catch up with her; Orfeu starts to see Mira as someone he would like to avoid.  The question the plot poses is whether Orfeu and Eurydice will ever get together.

Jealous Mira

Orfeu has one special talent—he plays the guitar like nobody’s business, and his musical skills are what he intends to use to get the girl.  Through the first two thirds of the film there is singing and dancing, all in the music of the Carnival.  It’s toward the end this film gets a little weird, with less about a potential romance and more about the skeletal Death character breaking it up.  I won’t give the end of the thin plot away, but if you want to Google the Greek legend you’ll see how it all ends.

All but one character are played by non-actors, and it shows.  The guy who plays Orfeu, Breno Mello, was a Brazilian soccer player, and his singing is dubbed.  The other main characters are cartoonish and over-the-top, like one might expect in a musical.  The film was renowned for its cinematography, which I suppose may have dazzled some folks in the time before everyone had a color TV in their homes and which probably showed up better on a 1959 theater screen than from the DVD I watched this from.

In short, this is one of those films that I didn’t quite connect with, but I can say wasn’t without its

Michelle Johnson couldn't act either, but Michael Caine didn't seem to care

charms.  Again, not a true musical, the tone and story reminded me just a little of one of those American musicals from the 50’s that I don’t care all that much for either.  I wasn’t much for it, but had there been some cloning or bare breasts, I might have been a bit more enthusiastic about it.

The Title:  Orfeu Negro.  It’s an adaptation of a story about Orpheus, only this guy’s black.  Get it?  Black Orpheus?

The culture:  The spectacle of the Brazilian Carnival is central to the film.  Like Mardi Gras, there is a large dose of paganism that mingles with the Catholic origins.  Voodoo and superstition dominate the culture in a way that seems almost pejorative to Brazil.

Agenda danger:  Barack Obama discusses his mother’s love for this film in his book Dreams of My Father.  Apparently, her feelings were off-putting and embarrassing for him because he saw this movie as patronizing.  He said, “I suddenly realized that the depiction of childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before.”  Watching it with her, he thought he saw in her what attracted her to his father, an affinity to for the exotic and forbidden.  Whatever.

Best Picture that year:  Ben Hur. 

Rating:  An entertaining enough movie, if not my cup of tea.