Parallel Mothers

 

Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers unfolds like a flower, revealing the uncertainty and complexity of its characters' lives. The mothers of the title -- Janis (Almodóvar's longtime collaborator Penélope Cruz) and Ana (new face Milena Smit) -- meet in a Madrid hospital where they are both about to deliver their first child. Janis, the almost-40-year-old fashion photographer, is jubilant with anticipation; Ana, a disaffected and alienated teenager, is not. They bond and enter single motherhood the better for having met ... at first.

As is his practice, Almodóvar folds into this already rich story of human (dis)connections socio-political elements that extend the film's message beyond the intimate to the universal. This time, the subplot involves Janis's grandfather, who was executed by Francoists and tossed in a mass grave with other anti-fascists. Janis enlists the help of a handsome archaeologist (Israel Elejalde) to exume the remains so that family members might bury them properly. This leads to personal entanglements.

Cruz's Janis is the emotional center of Almodóvar's film of two mothers, but Smit's Ana, a needy and dyspeptic character, no longer a child and not quite woman, is an intriguingly hazy mass of conflicted emotions and raw need. Her distress meshes well with Janis's own.

As provocative as Almodóvar enjoys being on behalf of people and causes close to him -- particularly LGBTQ+ rights -- the story of these two women feels uniquely of the moment, as societies clash in so many corners about women's liberty and threats to their freedom to choose their own happiness.