By Jim Seymour
For Variety

I AM a great believer in the power of culture to move mountains. Change never occurs overnight, of course, but through the perceptions of our great artists and their abilities to visualize the humanity in us all—the urge of each of us to make the slightest difference for good on Earth—we can recognize better the sometimes illusive quality of love.
Such an artist is the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Since the late ‘70s, he has been reshaping Spanish cinema and today, he is considered the most important Spanish director since Luis Bunuel. While Spanish films have long been part of the steady diet in Europe, Almodovar’s career stands out for his ability to become nearly as popular in the U.S. as he is overseas. Americans are often slower than Europeans to embrace the kinds of subjects he treats: sexual misfits, transvestites, homosexuals, disillusioned missionaries, and the forgotten underclass. Not the typical lineup or sort of cast list one usually associates with the commercially successful American movie. In the past, one usually had to wait for the brave, though infrequent, Australian import to make these storylines palpable. But Almodovar’s films, especially his masterpiece All About My Mother, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2000, seem to have broken the mold and provided foundations on which future films can build on.
Certainly one can partly attribute our warming to this adventurous artist to the growing tolerance in this country—outside the crippling influence of the Religious Right, of course —for a view that transcends society’s stereotypes about gender. Given the scientific evidence that homosexuality can be identified in nearly every species found on Earth, one wonders why this phenomenon—and all its associated variations—have so long been taboo. One must be grateful that there are such talented individuals as Mr. Almodovar who, with access to so many gifted actors and actresses, can dig deep enough to divulge the power of love to heal us all.
Manuela (the glorious Cecilia Roth), a nurse in Madrid, has devoted the last 18 years to her son, from whom she has withheld, much to his disappointment, the circumstances surrounding his unknown father. When Manuela loses her son in a car accident, she knows of no other retreat but to her past in Barcelona, so that she can make sense of the losses that have marked her life.
No sooner does she find herself clinging to persons whose lives are even more damaged than her own. Agrado is an old friend, still forging an existence on the streets, and Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a crusading nun who has recently discovered she’s pregnant and HIV positive. Manuela, in the attempt to locate her long, lost husband (another transvestite), whom she left when she discovered she was carrying his son many years before, slowly begins to understand the meaning of her life.
Through the course of her sustaining both these social outcasts, she finds herself growing close to an actress who has provided her employment. This association leads to a recognition of her own creative powers, curing her grief and enabling her to nourish her adopted women friends. As the various ingredients of her past become apparent, the audience begins to appreciate the courageous quality of this woman’s heart and the sort of truth-seeking required to redeem one’s belief in the possibility of a future. Out of the ashes of despair appear signs of redemption, not just for Manuela, but for all those she has touched.
There are so many extraordinary touches to this film. One of my favorites is the use of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire as a counterpoint to the actions of the women. The film could, in fact, be rightly considered a progeny of the American playwright’s empathy for the world’s vulnerable creatures, hidden in the shadows of respectability, waiting, not just to be recognized, but also, embraced.