Actresses and Women They are not only the subject of “All About My Mother,” but the film is also dedicated to them. Especially to the actresses who at some point have played actresses themselves.
Marisa Peredes as Huma Rojo
They are not only the subject of “All About My Mother,” but the film is also dedicated to them. Especially to the actresses who at some point have played actresses themselves.

I have always been attracted to films that portray the world of cinema. I do not mean those that deal with cinematic language, but those about actors, directors, writers, producers, stylists, make-up artists, extras, star imitators, etc. Films whose plots are films themselves, and the people who make them, their magnificence and sordidness. Of that inexistent genre, which participates from all sorts of other genres, I am particularly attracted to films about actresses.

Marisa Peredes as Huma RojoIn the final dedication, I mention the three that have moved me the most: Gena Rowlands in “Opening Night,” Bette Davis in “All About Eve” and Romy Schneider in “L’important c’est d’aimer.” The spirit of these three films impregnates with smoke, alcohol, desperation, madness, desire, helplessness, frustration, solitude, vitality and comprehension the characters in “All About My Mother.”

I could have added a much longer dedication and included other actresses who have played actresses in film: Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” Judy Garland in “A Star is Born,” Lana Turner in “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Imitation of Life,” Ava Gardner in “The Barefoot Contessa,” Fassbinder’s “Veronika Voss,” Julianne Moore in “Vanya on 42nd Street” by Louis Malle, Valentina Cortese mistaking continuously the door in Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” Maggie Smith in “California Suite,” Geraldine Page as Alexandra del Lago in “Sweet Bird of Youth,” Karen Black, literally stomped by a multitude of fans (extras hired, like her, to add some atmosphere at a movie premiere) in “The Day of the Locusts,” Jean Hagen, adorable ingenue in “Singing in the Rain,” even Kim Basinger, prostituting herself in the guise of Veronica Lake in “L.A. Confidential,” “Fedora” with a script by the master Billy Wilder, “Two Weeks in Another Town,” Godard´s “Contempt,” Anita Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita.” I could also dedicate it to all of the actresses in “Stage Door” by Gregory La Cava, etc., etc.

Pedro Almodovar with Marisa Peredes as Huma RojoAnd in campier terrain , “Valley of the Dolls,” Robert Aldrich’s “The Legend of Lylah Clare,” Paul Morrissey’s “Heat,” Carroll Baker in “Harlow,” “Mommie Dearest”… and many others that I am probably forgetting.

I am not interested at all in the degeneration of this non-genre, its TV versions. For example the multiple Marilyn biographies, the TV biopics, although there is some pleasure in watching Sophia Loren play herself, forty years later… but I am referring to cinema, not television, and in the case of Sophia Loren it is like a reality show illustrated with images.