The Age – Doug Anderson
Director Pedro Almodovar’s tender homage to motherhood.
Manuela works in the organ donor unit of a major Madrid hospital. A single mother who dotes on her 17-year-old son, Esteban (an aspiring writer yearning to know more about his father), Manuela is reluctant to illuminate the past given that her lover at the time abandoned her – and his male persona – to become Lola, a freewheeling transvestite.
Manuela fled Barcelona and, as the film opens, is taking Esteban to see the celebrated actress Huma Rojo perform as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, a role Manuela herself played some 20 years earlier. Keen to secure Rojo’s autograph, Esteban pursues her car as she departs the theatre. He is knocked down and fatally injured.