First I must say "Curses Netflix!". It isn't that I don't love the service, but my DVD got stuck with four minutes to go in the film and I could not get this disk to play that portion--so I finally just read it on website. So, this is a rare case when I did not see all the film...just 98%. Curses...
I must first point out that this is NOT a film to watch with your mother or priest. It is jam-packed full of morally ambiguous people and situations that are bound to offend. This is NOT surprising, as director Almondovar seems to LOVE to offend or at least challenge the viewer--and this is a frequent theme in his films. It covers topics like AIDS, transvestite prostitution, drug abuse, nuns getting pregnant and codependency. This is NOT a film for the faint-hearted!! HOWEVER, despite a bizarre plot that I won't even try to summarize, I must also point out that this is among the best-acted films I have ever seen...period. The film sure packs an emotional wallop as well and leaves the viewer marveling at the cast and the expert direction. A must-see for anyone wanting to see great acting...simply great.
Plot summary
Argentine Manuela Echevarria, an organ transplant coordinator at a Madrid hospital, ran off from her husband in Barcelona eighteen years ago upon learning that she was pregnant, their son, Esteban, who she has never told about his father despite his curiosity, and her husband who didn't know about the pregnancy when she ran off. An event coinciding with Esteban, an aspiring writer, turning seventeen leads to Manuela feeling the need to return to Barcelona to look for her husband. There, she ends up further acting as the maternal figure for people in need. One is a young nun named Sister Rosa, who she meets through her old friend, a transvestite prostitute who has assumed the name Agrado in her agreeable nature. Rosa has a strained relationship with her own conservative mother, as she is consumed with caring for her ill husband, who suffers from Alzheimer's. The other is actress Huma Rojo, currently appearing as Blanche Dubois in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which has long been a touchstone for Manuela in productions of it coinciding with milestone moments in her life, this production no different. Huma is in a troubled codependent relationship with her younger "Stella Kowalski" costar Nina Cruz, a closet junkie, hence Huma's emotional need for support. By the end of her stay in Barcelona, Manuela will have another non-relative for who she will feel the need to act as a mother figure.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Superb acting throughout--
brilliant style and compelling scenes
Manuela is a single mom who loses her beloved son Esteban when he gets hit by a car while chasing after actress Huma Rojo. Manuela is a nurse in charge of donor coordination. To avoid the temptation to look for Esteban's organs, she quits her job. She decides to return to Barcelona to tell transgender Lola about his son that he never knew he had. She finds her old transgender prostitute friend Agrado. She befriends pregnant nun Rosa along with Huma Rojo and her lover Nina Cruz.
I love the first half of the movie. I love Pedro Almodóvar's bright colors and exuberant style. The dirt road where the prostitutes congregate is an amazing scene. I just felt the movie loses focus later on as it deals with the various characters. It's still an amazing movie.
A Cry For Help
When her son is killed in a traffic accident after his 17th birthday, Cecilia Roth goes to tell his father he had a son. The father is a transsexual Toni Cantó.
Some of Pedro Almodóvar's movies seem to me to be little more than shock comedies with a great sense of color and composition. This one seems more. It a world where nothing makes sense, the characters here noisily assert who they are, defiant against the world's assumptions with a bravado that simultaneously hides and reveals their own lack of certainty. The reference to gay writers, the staging and restaging of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is more than a simple plot device. It's a subtextual plea for compassion.