Does Penélope Cruz age? More than 25 years after All About My Mother, the Oscar winner, 52, is still radiant as ever on the big screen.
She has collaborated with renowned filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar on a number of movies, but their 1999 feature perhaps takes the cake. With an impressive 98% average critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, All About My Mother is ranked No. 82 on the website’s list of 300 Best Movies of All Time, which is still being updated to this day.
Here’s the drama film’s official synopsis by The Criterion Collection, given that All About My Mother expectedly made it into the esteemed inventory of films:
“This Oscar-winning melodrama, one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most beloved films, provides a dizzying, moving exploration of the meaning of motherhood. In an instant, nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth) loses the teenage son she raised on her own. Grief-stricken, she sets out to search for the boy’s long-lost father in Barcelona, where she reawakens into a new maternal role, at the head of a surrogate family that includes a pregnant, HIV-positive nun (Cruz); an illustrious star of the stage (Marisa Paredes); and a transgender sex worker (Antonia San Juan). Beautifully performed and bursting with cinematic references, All About My Mother is a vibrant tribute to female fortitude, a one-of-a-kind family portrait, and a work of boundless compassion.”
Cruz Pulls Double-Duty as an Advocate
Earlier this summer, the beloved Spanish actress advocated for increased research into women’s health issues as she revealed she has suffered “many” brain aneurysm “scares” over the years.
Cruz addressed previous reports that she had a close call with a brain aneurysm while filming her upcoming film The Black Ball during the recent interview with Porter magazine.
“I have had many scares like that,” Cruz said in the profile, published on July 6. “Fortunately, I’m fine, it was a false alarm.” Find out more here.