Parallel Mothers
Madres paralelas

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest offering is a sublime melodrama about two single mothers of different ages and backgrounds who share a hospital room, give birth on the same day, and, as a result, forge a unique connection. Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar’s longtime muse, gives her most captivating performance as middle-aged professional photographer Janis Martinez. Accidentally impregnated during a whirlwind tryst with one of her subjects, Janis is delighted at the prospect of becoming a mother. Spanish TV actress Milena Smit surprises and enchants as Ana, a young mother whose pregnancy resulted from less enjoyable circumstances. Though hesitant at first to accept the idea of motherhood, Ana fully embraces the responsibilities of parenting in ways her own mother (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) never could. 

In the beginning, Almodóvar’s script seems like the type of narrative where the audience will anticipate the various story beats, one step ahead of the characters, But he takes sharp, inspired turns that, while always leading us in the directions we thought we were going, delivers us there in the most unexpected ways. For example, the first scenes of the picture seem to be setting up a political drama that confronts the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship, not a contemporary romantic melodrama about two single moms.

I’m reluctant to go much farther into the plot or thematic detail about the film, other than to say that the parallels drawn in this picture have less to do with how two women of different backgrounds, temperaments, and life experiences raise their kids and are more concerned with how secrets and lies, denial and repression of knowledge manifest themselves in both the personal and national conscience.  

There is no mistaking this picture as anything other than a melodrama, yet the behavior of each character feels driven by motives that don’t align with the derogatory nature that term has come to embody. This is a powerful story of two women trying to do the right thing in the face of tragedy, emotional confusion, self-realization, and the pursuit of buried truths. There are no villains—no living ones, anyway—just people trying to do the best they can under complex circumstances that are sometimes self-induced, sometimes part of cultural legacy, but just as often randomly dealt by the fickle finger of fate. I think this is my all-time favorite Almodóvar picture; it gives us everything we expect from this filmmaker plus an additional layer not seen in his work before.