Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón
Please note: Parallel Mothers will play in-person at Broadway Cinema only.
While 2019’s high watermark Pain & Glory saw Pedro Almodóvar spin his own past into gold, with Parallel Mothers he confronts the buried past of his native Spain. The highly commended opening film of this year’s Venice Film Festival, it sees Almodóvar turn more deeply into his more recent autumnal mode, pairing his familiar melodramatic plotting with emotional riches.
Two women meet in the delivery room, both having made the same decision to go it alone as mothers. Janis (Almodóvar regular Penélope Cruz) is middle-aged, resolved and delighted to find herself with child; Ana (Milena Smit) is a teenager, overwhelmed and regretful. Building mutual support, they soon discover how their lives are entwined in ways they may not have imagined. Meanwhile, Janis’s role as a forensic archaeologist finds her excavating the graves of men killed during Franco’s ‘White Terror’. Birth, death, motherhood, fate: few could make light work of such heavy themes, but at this point in his career we know to expect Almodóvar’s steady command.
Parallel Mothers brings many of Almodóvar’s key company back together. Long time fans will be glad to see actors Rossy de Palma and Julieta Serrano, as well as the typically sumptuous vision created by cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine and production designer Antxon Gomez. Almodóvar began his career as a bratty upstart of Madrid’s movida, taking raucous advantage of the post-Franco easing of expression. Parallel Mothers – literally and metaphorically – exhumes the bones of this period, no less of a caustic fillip to a forgetful nation for the film’s artistic maturity.