Life is incomplete for Manila, as the film tells us from the beginning. Her son Etiffin asked her for stills from her past performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire". After a little hesitation, Manila took out a black-and-white photo in which she was still young, with a girl's reserved face under her gray hat. It's just that the son's finger runs across the edge of the photo. What is missing in the other half of the uneven tear?
We can’t know, and Manila’s son can’t guess everything. The best birthday gift he hopes is the story his mother told his father. But he will never know. On her 17th birthday, her mother stood in front of a huge poster and waved to him. On the poster was the portrait of the nun, the heroine of "A Streetcar Named Desire". She stared coldly at the crowd on the street, her mother and son, and They are going to see her performance. In the rain, Etiffin knocked on Xiuzi's car window anxiously, asking for an autograph for his mother. What he got, but Xiuzi had a puzzled look. He desperately chased the car away, and then another car...The
camera shot Manila's distorted face in horror and despair from a very strange angle, as if a son lying on the ground was observing his mother. That night, Manila lost everything. After the shout of "mi hijo, mi hijo (my child)" gradually calmed down, she quit her job in the hospital and followed her son's heart (donated to others). To Madrid.
From Barcelona to Madrid, for Manila, it is not only the difference in the distance between the two cities, but also two kinds of life. When he left Madrid, his son was still in his womb, so Barcelona represents the days of mutual love with his son. And when you return to Madrid, you are back to your previous life. However, the lack of the two most important roles in life makes her return actually a kind of regeneration.
The Chinese translation of the film is called "Everything About My Mother" or "On My Granny". I have never figured out who "I" is. Is the dead son telling it from the perspective of time and space? Or is it that Manila's last adopted son will grow up many years later and remember everything about her adoptive mother? Or does this "I" do not exist, just the director's sustenance? In any case, this is a movie with too much content, and maternal love connects all the plot fragments and emotional fragments together. The love in Almodovar's movies is always strong, almost perverted, making people unable to escape, almost suffocating. This may be related to the Spaniards' natural, outrageous and romantic character, like their football, bullfighting, and flamenco dancing. So there is the love born out of rope, tape, and handcuffs in "Bound Me, Tie Me", and there is the love that breaks through crime, forgetting, repaying gratitude and repression in "Living Color and Fragrance". In comparison, the emotions in "Everything About My Mother" are just the warm water flowing slowly, and there is little thrilling, so that it is difficult for me to accurately recall the development of the plot when I leave the movie.
After Manila came to Madrid, he accidentally reunited with an old friend Agley who had undergone sex reassignment surgery, and Agley introduced an important figure, the nun Rosa. When Rosa first appeared on the stage, she was like a beam of light shining into the eyes of the audience. She is the kind of figure that reminds people of the Virgin in Raphael's paintings, both in appearance and action. She wanted to find a job for Manila, so she introduced her to her mother, hoping that her mother could leave Manila to take care of her demented father. But Rosa's mother treated Manila bluntly. Rosa hurriedly bid farewell to her mother and went downstairs to find Manila. The sun on the street was bright and the children were playing games, but there seemed to be some sad things lurking in the calm air.
Yes, soon Rosa found out that she was pregnant and also found out she was infected with AIDS. The ignorance with her parents makes her trustworthy in this world, and the only person she can rely on is Manila. She finally cried and fell on Manila's shoulder. Manila finally agreed to move in and live with her. She took care of her like a mother took care of her daughter.
Rosa told Manila who’s father was. Manila’s son was Etiffin. Rosa said that if she gave birth to a boy, he would be the third Etiffin.
Everyone knows who is the first Etiffin.
Then Rosa died, after the third Etiffin was born. Relatives and friends gathered around her tomb and mourned. No one noticed the people walking down the wall, except Manila.
He walked down slowly, heavy and cautiously, and took off his sunglasses, revealing an extremely beautiful face, but it was a male face.
Manila's face was full of tears, and her blond hair swayed helplessly in the wind. In front of me was the first Etiffin, the father of his child, and the other half of the missing photo was also the father of Rosa's child, the "man" who caused Rosa's death. In the face of her husband of the past, and another woman of today, Manila couldn't even hate to find a point to focus on, not to mention that Etiffin was already dying. He didn't even know that Manila had children of her own. And when he knew, this irresponsible person left his last sincere tears.
This is the fate of Manila. She once had a husband, and her husband suddenly became a woman one day, so she took the child in her womb away from her husband, but her son died in a car accident on the 17th birthday. The reason is "A Streetcar Named Desire"-a drama she performed on the same stage with her husband when she was young. The film involves various dark sides of modern society such as transgender, drugs, homosexuality, AIDS, etc., but it does not give us the feeling of suffering when watching movies such as "Pulp Fiction" because, as mentioned earlier, maternal love connects everything together. , The brilliance of maternal love purifies the darkness. Manila endured great sorrow and imbalance in raising her son for 17 years. After the death of her son, she lost support and went to take care of the lives of the actors Siu and Nina of "A Streetcar Named Desire", taking care of the younger ones like a mother. Rosa. When Rosa Yesi, she picked up Rosa's child who was abandoned by her grandmother, freeing him from the shadow of AIDS that he was born with. No wonder "Middle-aged women in Spanish movies are the cutest."
However, my favorite character in this movie is not Manila. She is a strong man. Facing a series of injuries from fate, she always resolves everything with her broad mind and superhuman love. She is the most respectable. The nun Rosa has a more tragic sense of beauty.
Rosa has parents, but maybe the parents are not satisfied with her daughter's commitment to social welfare work. Their relationship is very strange. The only love in this beautiful girl's life made her pay too high a price. She went to the hospital to get the test report by herself. She couldn't rely on her parents, so she had to turn to Manila, who she had just met. Passing the square on the way to the hospital to give birth, she asked the driver to stop the car, face to the window, quietly looking at the scenery outside, as if she knew that this time was a farewell to a better life. At this time, she saw her father's dog and exclaimed in excitement: "Sharpi." The dog crawled onto her obediently, but her father didn't recognize her anymore. The father walked to her and said that this dog is not afraid of birth, said how old you are this year, and how tall you are, just don't say that you are my daughter. Rosa smiled and answered every question of her father. She would never cry again. The moment she got the test report, she had already been declared dead. From that time to now, Rosa had already finished crying if she wanted to cry, just waiting calmly for the final arrival. To the father who turned and left, she finally called father. "Dad, goodbye." Father did not hear.
Rosa did not cry, but we all cried.
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