This chapter explores the ways in which Pedro Almodóvar's 1999 film Todo sobre mi madre lends itself to interpretation through, or intersects with, concepts in queer theory and queer film theory. I will specifically explore three concepts: first, the supposition that sex and gender are performative, multiple, interchangeable and transmissible embodiments of feminine and masculine identity, subjectivity, and desire beyond patriarchal, heteronormative psychic and ideological frameworks; second, a ‘heterosocial’ notion of community, referred to in Chapter 1 as an alternative ethical model based on solidarity between a heterogeneous, transgenerational group of women; and third, and most importantly, the idea of becoming a mother beyond biological, heterosexual reproduction and the Oedipal, nuclear, heteronormative family.

I am not the first to pursue these issues in relation to this film (Maddison 2000; Martin-Márquez 2004; Bersani and Dutoit 2004; 2009). I hope to add to the discussion, first, an exploration of the film's representation of femininity in the light of Ettinger's concept of the ‘matrixial’ (2006a); and second, a reflection on the film's relationship to critical theory and psychoanalysis. In stressing the intersections and productive tensions between cinema and theory, I aim to move beyond the interpretative and epistemological limitations of simply ‘applying’ theory to cinematic practices. In particular, I think about the film's theoretical self-consciousness, opening it up to a reflection on the interpretive and affective demands produced in spectators by the film's aesthetic and ethical potentialities. I move between a focus on the film's textual signification and a focus on how the spectator may experience the film as a more porous space between the viewing subject and the projection screen.

My interpretation is based on my reading of three sequences: Esteban's fatal accident, Agrado's monologue and Manuela's journey from Madrid to Barcelona. I investigate the ways in which the film represents ‘queer motherhood’, and propose that it produces in the spectator the notion of becoming a ‘queer (m)other’. The notion that sex and gender are performative – as theorised by queer theory, particularly in the early work of Butler – enables us to reflect on how, in Todo sobre mi madre, sex and gendered subjectivity are articulated through iteration and imitation (repetition), as well as becoming (difference).