All About My Mother

The seed sits in Pedro Almodóvar’s 1995 film La flor de mi secreto, where trainee doctors rehearse asking the mother of a teenager killed in a road accident for his organs. Manuela here is a transplant nurse, on the real side of that same rehearsal. The accident restages a scene from John Cassavetes’ Opening Night, and the dramatic knot is tied there. Shooting was mainly on location in Barcelona. The awards are not one Oscar alone. Cannes gave it the directing prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury; the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film followed. At BAFTA, 2 of its 3 nominations became awards, direction and film not in the English language, while Being John Malkovich took original screenplay. The Golden Globe for foreign language film went to it too. At the Goyas, 14 nominations produced 7 wins; that ceremony was the first Goya held outside Madrid, hosted by Antonia San Juan, who plays Agrado in the film. Samuel Adamson’s stage version ran at the Old Vic in 2007, the first English adaptation of any Almodóvar work. A good fit if you want to watch knowing the organ donation scene grew from an earlier Almodóvar film. Not for anyone unprepared for an opening built on the death of a child.