Lilly Glenister

                  The films that always stick with me are the ones that have me building connections with characters. In Pedro Almodóvar’s academy award-winning foreign film from 1999, Todo Sobre Mi Madre (or All About My Mother), I quickly became attached to the humorous and authentic Agrado, an eccentric transwoman and dedicated friend. In Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Almodóvar brings transgender characters into the forefront of cinematography during a time when there was even less acceptance and representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in the media in both the U.S. and Spain, where the film originally premiered. In this paper, I will critically analyze how the film’s transgender characters were at times represented as deviant trans stereotypes, but as the film progressed, were given more humanizing and relatable traits.
                  Almodóvar, who is one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers (Rivera-Cordero, 2012), wrote and directed Todo Sobre Mi Madre, which takes place sometime in the 1980s when the HIV and AIDS crisis was at its peak. The film was produced mainly by Spanish companies and was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in many different countries (“All About My Mother” IMDb, 2017). I chose this media text to analyze because I wanted to not only look at how trans characters were represented (or not represented) during the 1980s and 90s, but also how trans characters were represented in a different country. Another factor that made we want to critically analyze this film was Almodóvar’s positionality as a gay male and the plot’s focus on HIV and AIDS in relation to the LGBTQ+ community.
                  The film, which is entirely in Spanish, evokes so many emotions throughout its plot, from despair and sadness to hopefulness. First taking place in Madrid, Todo Sobre Mi Madre follows Manuela, a single mother whose son, Esteban, is killed by a car the night of his seventeenth birthday after seeing a play and trying to get an autograph from a famous theatre actress. The rest of the film follows Manuela’s journey to find Esteban’s birthfather in Barcelona, who once went by the name Esteban but is now a transgender woman named Lola, and tell him about the death of his son he never knew about. Once in Barcelona, Manuela meets with an old friend, Agrado, who she thinks can help her find Lola. We first meet the character, Agrado, in a scene where she is seen being brutalized and almost raped by a male suitor. Agrado, who is a transgender prostitute, is initially portrayed as a very stereotypical, flamboyant and overly sexualized transwoman. Agrado is the first exposure to a trans character we get in the film and her association with traditionally deviant activities, such as intravenous drug use and prostitution, places both herself and the trans community in Spain in a negative light. However, as the film progresses, Agrado becomes more humanized, and is seen as a helpful friend and caring person.
                  The influence of Almodóvar’s positionality as a gay male is seen through his choice in actors and actresses to play his film’s transgender characters. His film juxtapositions the character of Agrado, played by Antonia San Juan who is a transgender actress, with the character of Lola, who is played by Toni Cantó, a heterosexual male (Rivera-Cordero, 320). What was most interesting to me about this choice in actors, was that “Almodóvar not only (casted) a trans(gender woman) but has her play, by far, the most sympathetic, and indeed interesting part” (Rivera-Cordero, 320) in the entire movie. This to me is the overriding factor that makes even the negative representations of transwomen in the movie into a positive. Although Agrado initially represents the trans community in a very deviant and stereotypical way, she eventually shows a true transformation and redefining of self, and “from beaten prostitute she takes control of her life and manages to escape the sordid milieu of pimps and prostitutes” (Rivera-Cordero, 319). The position of Lola as a character played by a non-transgender male, is also intriguing, because it is Lola’s character that is associated with many aspects of hegemonic masculinity (Ross, 401). Lola, although now a transgender woman, still has “certain masculinities (that) are more central, or more associated with authority and social power” (Ross, 403). She is in many ways, a stereotypical macho-male who is disrespectful to women, a cheater, a liar and a thief. Unlike Agrado, who is a loyal friend, funny and also warm and friendly, Lola is portrayed as a sort of deadbeat dad, who not only impregnated Manuela, but also a young nun named Hermana Rosa (played by Penélope Cruz). Lola not only leaves Hermana pregnant, but also infects her with the HIV virus that eventually leads to AIDS and kills her. This is significant, because more of the positive characteristics of transwomen are shown through Agrado, who is a central character in the film, versus negative stereotypes, that are primarily associated with Lola.
                  The defining moment for transgender representation in Todo Sobre Mi Madre is Agrado’s famous monologue she gives to a theatre audience about her journey as a transwoman, where “the aggressive frontality and naked closeness of (the) shot, with Agrado delivering her speech almost directly to the camera and with only her head and shoulders visible against the theatre red curtain, communicate quite obviously the thematic importance of her speech, but also force us to look upon a person who many might find repulsive or disgusting” (Khatchikian, 13).  The significance of this scene is that it “represents a break in the film and occupies a brief yet clearly highlighted moment in which (Almodóvar) is able to present in the most charming light possible a lifestyle which until recently in Spain would not have been considered compatible with the mainstream” (Rivera-Cordero, 319). Through Agrado’s “authentic” (Khatchikian, 10) view of herself presented in her speech, she redefines not only herself, but the traditional negative view of transwomen. This critique is significant because it is meant to show an early depiction of transgender representation and how Almodóvar’s film was a head of its time in 1999, giving an important look at the common transgender woman experience in Spain through Agrado’s character.


References
All About My Mother (1999). (2017). Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185125/

Khatchikian, A. (2013). Performance and Gender in Almodóvar's Bodies. Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://www.academia.edu/4935678/Performance_and_Gender_in_Almodóvars_Bodies

Rivera-Cordero, V. (2012). Illness, authenticity and tolerance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre. Romance Notes, 52(3), 311-323. doi:10.1353/rmc.2012.0021

Ross, K. (2012). The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media. West Sussex, UK: Wiley & Blackwell.
 

Note on Author

Lilly Glenister is a junior at San Diego State University and is double majoring in journalism and political science. After her undergraduate studies are complete, Lilly would like to attend law school. She currently is employed as a student worker in the victim assistance program at the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office. If you would like to keep up with Lilly, you can follow her on Twitter or message her on LinkedIn.

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