FRANCE: SPANISH FILM DIRECTOR PEDRO ALMODOVAR'S PALME D'OR CONTENDER "TODO SOBRE MI MADRE" SCREENED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 388390

  • Title: FRANCE: SPANISH FILM DIRECTOR PEDRO ALMODOVAR'S PALME D'OR CONTENDER "TODO SOBRE MI MADRE" SCREENED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 18th May 1999
  • Summary: MUSIC BAND WS OF CANNES
  • Embargoed: 2nd June 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Reuters ID: LVA36FR5OUN71ZD4O8BM4UX27000
  • Story Text: Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's Palme d'Or contender "Todo Sobre Mi Madre" (All About my Mother) has been screened at the Cannes Film Festival.The film pays a tribute to all women, as well to the director's mother.Other Palme d'Or runner is Chilean director Raoul Ruiz with his film
    "Time Regained," based on part of Marcel Proust's multi-volume novel "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu".
    Although deeper than his more recent work, the 12th film from from Spain's most popular and most international director Pedro Almodovar is just as irreverent as ever.
    The film, in which a mother (Cecilia Roth) who tries to trace her son's father after the young man dies in a car accident, is peppered with his own brand of vivid and plain-speaking personalities.
    These include a transsexual father and his prostitutes friends, a theater diva and her junkie daughter, a pregnant nun and a host of dirty, not to mention kitsch, jokes.
    But the film also traces the difficulties of relationships within families and has a circular plot which lends itself well to the subject matter.
    Almodovar's key source of inspiration was not only the women but also the work of Spanish film maestro Luis Bunuel.
    Despite Almodovar's huge critical acclaim abroad, an Oscar nomination for "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988) and an honorary Cesar from France, he has never received any formal recognition by the Spanish film industry.
    One other contender for the Palme d'Or is Chilean director Raoul Ruiz for his film "Time regained".
    The film begins in 1922 when Proust, on his deadbed, looks through photos, remembering his past.But the real characters mingle with the fictional ones and gradually, fiction overwhelms reality.
    Proust's characters, members of the high society, come to life as his memories alternate between the happy days of his childhood and his social and literay circle.
    Screen divas Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart and Chiara Mastroiani play some of the characters.But the revelation of the film is Italian actor Marcello Mazzarella, who bears a startling resemblance to Proust, his character.
    This is his first non-Italian film.The film is merely a series of vignettes strung together, leaving the story difficult to understand.
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