Dialing down the bold delirium that defined his early work, Pedro Almodóvar delivered a personal best in 1999 with this gorgeous film about unplanned mothers (including Penélope Cruz, in a breakthrough role, playing a pregnant nun), absent fathers, and the scrapping and scraping it takes to inch closer to your authentic self. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and, less celebrated, the Award for a Shot Transition From a Train Tunnel to Soaring Over Barcelona That Makes Me Cry Every Single Damn Time I See It. Austin Film Society screens the film in 35mm as part of its World Cinema Classics program. –
Kimberley Jones Read a full review of All About My Mother.