All About my Mother – Clarity in Transgender Representation

Watching All about my Mother today is a bit of a shock to the system. Not only does it finish beautifully in one heart-breaking revelation after another (to the point of being like ‘why does that have to happen as well?”) involving grounded and relatable characters living through serious hardship, but it deals head-on with attitudes towards Transgender people. It gives a – still really rare - insight into what being Transgender means and more about the experience. This in a film made 23 years ago.

I think that misunderstandings of Transgender issues have become lazy journalists’ new way of trying to incite fits of rage out of normal, sensible people. In the past, tabloids and magazines have wasted paper to induce rage by filling pages with celebrity drug scandals, lies about Brexit, or stories of Boris Johnson doing something that isn’t dreadful for once. They have now, more damagingly and for reasons I couldn’t tell you, decided to attack the Transgender community with questionable stories of Transgender athletes winning things; Transgender people suing the NHS or a charity, or Katlyn Jenner being ‘annoying’, All these examples I plucked from a list of stories published within 24 hours of writing this. You have seen them all before though and they appear designed to have people laugh at or hate an entire community.  

What I think has happened is popular ‘news’ outlets have (again) found a topic that isn’t easy to understand and doesn’t instantly fit into our current social framework. They have then, as they do, lied and used extreme cases to make a blanket point about the whole group, throwing them into the ‘wokie’ title that only serves to belittle and further skew something already quite misunderstood. Due to this and people like Piers Morgan, the experience and even meaning of Transgender has consequently become dangerously misunderstood, and I can’t claim to fully understand everything about it to begin with. I am not Transgender, but surely the misidentification and misunderstanding of the community is pain enough without people being actually angry about extreme and rare cases that have been applied to a whole group of people.  

Neither Lola nor Agrada are the film’s main characters, but it is these characters that drive the plot and life of the film. Absent until the last 10 minutes of the film, Lola is the plot’s driving force, affecting all major plot points without us even seeing her.  While being present throughout in memory, Lola’s effect on the plot is not focussed on her gender and nor are her relationships with the characters explained in a way that would acknowledge it as abnormal. They are treated as normal, sensitive subject matter.

She is a very destructive force, hated by Agrada, an absent father to Estaban, and passing HIV to Rosa, all before her first appearance. Perhaps this is Almodovar’s portrayal of the portrayal of Trans people. It is certainly easy to view Lola as an evil and destructive force. That is until we meet her in the last ten minutes. Introduced in a mysterious fashion that backs up her larger-than-life effect on the film, what follows is a heartbreaking scene that shows us an empathic, grieving, and loving person who has clearly struggled with their relationships and situations.  

Similarly, the strong yet whimsical character of Agrada is again a driving force throughout, introducing the main character to key components of the film, all while taking the intrusive/uncomfortable actions of other characters towards her gender in her stride.

While gender is touched upon throughout the film, Agrada addresses it head-on in a monologue that is particularly striking.  I first thought it was ironic. ‘I am very authentic!’ she says ‘Look at this body. All made to measure.’ Agrada points to her face: ‘Almond-shaped eyes. £80,000’ then various other parts where she had undergone surgery to become more feminine and listing off a comprehensive medical bill. ‘It costs a lot to be authentic, ma’am. And one can’t be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.’

What stuck with me about this scene was the clarity given to something that is consistently portrayed as complex and unsolvable by media and political heads. In a single scene, Agrada talks about the struggle of being authentic. How to be true to yourself when you physically aren’t what you feel or know are. That’s what makes the film so great for me as it is a situation I haven’t been in but the characters Almodovar creates and portrays to us are relatable and accommodate my possible confusion with clarity and acceptance.

And really that’s how such a subject should be portrayed. Not in extreme, controversial situations, but in a clear a way, one where the situations are things we have been through or can imagine happening to us. Situations about people who feel real. Through this fictional story, Almodovar has given an account of the Transgender experience that is more authentic and real than the stories portrayed by the institutions so many people trust to give real accounts of political and social issues. Ultimately, representation needs clarity.