Spanish auteur director Pedro Almodovar returns with Parallel Mothers, another absorbing drama with a political dimension. Reuniting with Penelope Cruz for the eighth time, the melodramatic tale of two mothers giving birth on the same day and the fallout from events of that time engages throughout.
Cruz is superb as Janis, a photographer who becomes pregnant following an encounter with a married client – Arturo, played by Israel Alejandre – who also happens to be a forensic anthropologist. Her life becomes intertwined with the equally good Milena Smit, a 17-year-old living with her actress mother, whose pregnancy came about in very different circumstances. The pair form a bond, sharing the trials and tribulations of their lives – inevitably leading to some thorny dramatic twists and turns, deftly handled by Almodovar.
Alongside this story is that of the disappeared: the people who went missing in Franco’s Spain during the country’s bloody civil war, and the women who survived them, wanting to give their relatives a decent burial. Cruz wants a field excavated near her rural home to uncover the tragedy of the past and provide closure, and the father of her child can help with that. Parallel Mothers isn’t the outrageous Almovodar of old but a considered, more political filmmaker examining both the weight of his country’s history as the younger generation try to move forward, and how the past needs to be remembered in the present to avoid the same tragedies.
That aside, there are some delicious moments of daring storytelling as the relationship between Cruz and Smit develops during Parallel Mothers – a relationship that convinces thanks to their excellent, grounded performances. The script never quite goes in the ways you think it will and there is, as always, a wealth of compassionate humanity through Almodovar’s idiosyncratic lens.
Dir: Pedro Almodovar (15) (104 mins)
Released in cinemas on Fri 28 Jan
words KEIRON SELF