#1999cinema

All About My Mother (1999)

To celebrate 1999 and its contribution to film (I know that sounds weird but hear me out) I re-watched - or watched for the first time - a collection of films released in that year.  I don’t know how to present them other than alphabetically.  My brain works best when there is some order.

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) is a Spanish film by my favorite foreign director, Pedro Almodóvar.

A woman’s sweet son gets killed on his 17th birthday.  She was planning to tell him all about his father.  They had been to see the play A Streetcar Named Desire.  And she had given him a Capote book for his birthday at midnight.

When her son gets killed she goes to search for his father in drag queen Barcelona.  She sees Streetcar day after day and she meets a pregnant nun.

I feel sure i would like Barcelona - at least Almodóvar’s Barcelona.  His characters are so interesting.  Even the actual women often resemble drag queens.  And most of his players are not quite what they seem.  A little dirty under the nails or twisted in the mind.

All About My Mother won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  I didn’t recognize any of the other nominees so Bravo!  Of course I’d vote for Pedro.

Although I don’t think this is Almodovar’s best film, I would watch it again right now.  It’s a damn good film.  Lovely and sad and funny.  Just like Pedro’s Barcelona.

Aimee & Jaguar (1999)

To celebrate 1999 and its contribution to film (I know that sounds weird but hear me out) I re-watched - or watched for the first time - a collection of films released in that year.  I don’t know how to present them other than alphabetically.  My brain works best when there is some order.

So - I’m starting with Aimee & Jaguar.  I saw this film on video back in the 00′s.  At that time, I was watching anything Blockbuster had that was foreign, and that wasn’t much.  I was so pleased with this film I named my cat and later my blog after the main character, Felice.

Aimee & Jaguar is a lesbian film, yes.  But it’s more.  There are four Jewish girls hiding out in Berlin waiting for papers so they can leave.  One works for a nazi propaganda paper.  One cares for the children of the wife of a nazi soldier.  These four women are passing as non-Jews.  If you are a Jew in Berlin you are dead.  Everyone blames the Jews for the bombing and the ills of the world.

In the meantime, Lilly, the wife of the nazi soldier, is having affairs with various men and the Jewish girls do their best to survive and try to have a little fun also.

Once Felice (Jaguar) meets Lilly (Aimee) things get sticky.  They do fall in love and it is one thing to be a lesbian in 1940′s Berlin but it is entirely unacceptable to be a Jew.

20 years ago I saw this movie and did not know it was a true story.  I watched the special features on the DVD and it had an interview with Lilly, the real Lilly, who talked about how much she loved Felice.  It was extraordinary.

So a film about Jews in WWII, in German no less, and you may think - meh - I’ll pass.  But then there’s the style of the cinema.  It’s got a wretched burned up and blown up city, with people who don’t have enough food, and yet Berlin has a style and an edge that is unmistakable.  Plus the sex scenes are powerful.

I was telling my 32-year-old son about the film and said, ‘you probably don’t want to watch it since it’s in German’.  He said he wasn’t concerned about what they were saying.  I think I’ll get it for him for Christmas.