I came to this film wanting to hate it, but I was seduced by it and it affected me deeply. Why hate? Because I had just seen a TV documentary about Almodovar. He talks a good deal of shallow rubbish, and the showbusiness darlings who surround him are vile. However, his film speaks with the sincere voice of artistic talent. It even has a touch of greatness.
It is a film about Woman. Almodovar is well-known for his preoccupation with feminine sensibility, and here we go through the range of female awarenesses - Madre, Puta, Actriz. This is not the 'macro' masculine world of war and politics, but the feminine 'micro' universe of caring, loving and suffering. In a real sense, it is "All About Eve".
Manuela loves her son Esteban totally and unconditionally. When he is taken from her, she must forge a new life. Back in her native Barcelona she finds fulfilment caring for Rosa the pregnant nun and Huma the barren actress. A new Esteban appears, and the cycle of living and loving begins again.
This flimsy summary of the story gives no real idea of the film's symbolic and dramatic richness. It is a pattern made of other patterns, with stories repeating, reversing and overlapping endlessly. Names can mean a break with the past (Agrado, Huma) or they can insist on continuity (Rosa, Esteban). In the guignol tradition, names can also delineate character - Agrado tries to make life agreeable for others, Huma Rojo is red smoke, a hollow illusion, and Nina is an adult with a child's personality.
Almodovar deliberately offends against social custom. Women are fathers, birth means death and drama is more real than life. It is tempting to think of Almodovar as the new Bunuel, and he takes the same childish pleasure in shocking the 'decent' Spanish bourgeoisie. When Agrado gives her performance in the theatre, the old folks walk out in disgust while the youngsters stay and are entertained.
"This play marked my life," says Manuela of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. It made her a mother (the defining experience of her existence) because it introduced her to Lola. She explains that she played Stella and Lola played Kowolski, literally and figuratively. The male symbol is brutal and cruel, the female symbol is the nurturer of life who endures abuse because she loves. Like Stella, Manuela escaped, pregnant and alone. The play returns later as Esteban's birthday treat and the cause of his death. Manuela knows the text by heart, and when she follows the production to Barcelona, fate pulls her into the drama and she triumphs as Stella. Huma is Blanche, the sad derelict, "relying on the kindness of strangers". (Another link with the play is the title of Almodovar's own production company, "Deseo".)
Esteban's delight with his new book is shown in the reading of the foreword - "es un prefacio maravilloso!" The film, similarly, has a marvellous preface. A bag of plasma drips purposefully, its valve shaped like a crucifix. The symbolism is rich and catholic, and prepares us for what will come - here is a figurative mother, giving the blood of life and suffering the cross of sorrow. Taps, console and graph represent institutionalised care, as opposed to the natural, personal care of a mother. These things are neat and orderly, but cold and soulless. This is the organ donation unit of a hospital. It does excellent work, but we see its effort in fragments rather than a whole. The files list organs, not people - 'higado', 'corazon'. Technology can help us, but it can never replace maternal love. We feel uneasy when we are told that "the machine is breathing for him".
Manuela works as a nurse (symbol of the nurturing mother) in this unit, and we see her as an actress appearing in a training video, playing a mother whose son is dead. Two doctors ask for the boy's organs. New life must be nourished from his body's wreckage. When the scene is repeated for real, it is almost too painful to watch. Almodovar takes us to the 'meta' level, with Manuela's anguish setting up cross-rhythms with her professionalism. Love is stronger than systems, and the organ co-ordinator weeps for Manuela.
The real Manuela stands tiny before a vast advert for 'Streetcar', showing Huma's face. Is the image more potent than the individual? Or is Almodovar saying that superficial impact fades, whereas human empathy endures? What is the relationship between the true woman and her made-up face? Esteban dies pursuing the 'red smoke' of an actress's fame. If he had stayed with his real mother and not chased an illusion, he would have been safe.
Esteban will bestow new life. We go with Manuela as she follows her son's heart to Coruna, where another young man has hope restored. The mulch of death feeds the roots of life. Manuela knows two places, Spain's first and second cities, Madrid and Barcelona (importantly for Almodovar, these are the two pre-eminently 'modern' towns). She moves between them along the tunnel umbilicus, as a pregnant teenager, childless mother and finally as triumphant madonna with the 'new' Esteban.
The spectacular vista of Barcelona and sumptuous portal of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia rapidly disappear, and we are soon in an ugly wasteland where prostitutes parade as grotesques in a hell worthy of Goya. These two Barcelonas recur again and again - the outward city of quirky, appealing architecture and the mean streets of the hopeless, directionless underclass.
Almodovar's narrative has been engrossing up to this point. Now it will expand and deepen as a new cast of characters is woven into the film's fabric.
"Que raro!"
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