The partnership between Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz is one of the all-time great director/actor pairings (Pain and Glory, Volver, All About My Mother), which the longtime collaborators prove once again on their seventh film together, Parallel Mothers. Even in a somewhat uneven film, Almodóvar and Cruz work together beautifully to create deeply affecting moments between rich, multilayered characters. Almodóvar combines some heavy political commentary with his familiar sensitive, colorful melodrama, and while those elements don't always fit together perfectly, they achieve a cumulative power by the end of the movie.
Cruz plays Janis, a successful photographer approaching 40 who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant after a fling with a married archaeologist. The situation may not quite be ideal, but Janis is delighted to become a mother, and she attempts to share some of that enthusiasm with 17-year-old Ana (Milena Smit), Janis' roommate in the hospital where they're both giving birth. Ana, too, is unexpectedly pregnant, but she's much less excited about motherhood, and it doesn't help that her own mother, Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), is less than supportive.
Janis and Ana deliver their babies and go their separate ways, but their lives remain intertwined, at first via short phone calls and then in more intimate, direct encounters. As Janis clashes with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), her baby's father, she grows closer to Ana, and the two women support each other through personal and familial hardships. Teresa, a small-time actress finally experiencing her big break in middle age, leaves Ana on her own with her baby, and Ana turns to Janis as a maternal figure as well as a friend — and possibly something more.
Despite their private ups and downs, Janis remains connected to Arturo because he's spearheading a project to excavate an unmarked mass grave in Janis' hometown, where the bodies of her grandfather and other dissidents killed during the Spanish Civil War are buried. Almodóvar opens the movie with Janis' efforts to find someone who will take the necessary steps to excavate the grave, and then he lets that subplot simmer in the background for most of the movie before bringing it back in the third act. The theme of reckoning with ugly national history sits awkwardly beside Almodóvar's typically soapy plotting, but a confrontation between Janis and Ana eventually brings those disparate threads together, united by the idea of generational legacy and trauma.
Cruz provides the emotional anchor for all of Almodóvar's bold storytelling choices, and her performance is inviting and empathetic, even when Janis makes some questionable moral choices. Cruz and relative newcomer Smit have an easy chemistry that both emphasizes and erases the age gap between the two characters, finding common ground despite vastly different backgrounds and experiences. The plot encompasses a series of twists that could come off as manipulative or cheesy, but the actors find the truth and honesty in each new revelation. This may not be Cruz's best performance for Almodóvar (that's her Oscar-nominated role in 2006's brilliant Volver), but it's up there with her strongest work.
Almodóvar's visual sense remains as vibrant as ever, with color-coded set design and impeccable, effortless fashion choices for every character. The genius of Almodóvar's later work is the way he uses the heightened, often outrageous aspects of his early provocative films to tell more mature, resonant stories, without coming off as timid or compromised. Parallel Mothers is another ambitious, impassioned and sometimes messy Almodóvar film, with big statements and big emotions. He remains lucky to have Cruz alongside him to bring those outsize sentiments to life, with a beauty and immediacy that draws audiences right in. ♦
PARALLEL MOTHERS
