MUM’S THE WORD
THE BOND BETWEEN A PAIR OF SINGLE MOTHERS IS TESTED IN SPANISH DRAMA
PARALLEL MOTHERS (15) HHHHI
SPANISH writer-director Pedro Almodovar reunites with two of his screen muses, Penelope Cruz and Rossy de Palma, for a slowburning and melodramatic portrait of parenthood.
The Oscar-winning film-maker has repeatedly explored the tangled relationship between matriarchs and children in his stylish and sensual work, most gloriously in his 1999 comedy drama All About My Mother, which navigated life after premature death through the gift of organ donation.
In the aptly titled Spanish language film Parallel Mothers, Almodovar revisits some of his favourite themes with characteristic flourishes but he also leafs through one of the dark chapters of his country’s history during the Spanish Civil War.
Photographer Janis Martinez (Cruz) meets charming forensic archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde) at a shoot and she seeks his advice about excavating a Spanish Civil War mass grave close to her home village.
Arturo has a wife undergoing chemotherapy for her cancer but he is attracted to Janis and they sleep together.
Soon after, she falls pregnant and chooses to raise the child alone without Arturo’s involvement.
Before Janis gives birth with support from her magazine editor best friend Elena (de Palma), she befriends pregnant teenager Ana Manso (Milena Smit) and her mother Teresa (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) at the hospital.
Janis and Ana deliver daughters on the same night, Cecilia and Anita respectively, and agree to keep in touch as they embark on journeys as single
mothers.
Months later, tragedy unexpectedly brings the two women closer but Janis has an ulterior motive for wanting to hire Ana as a live-in au pair for baby Cecilia that will test their sisterly solidarity to breaking point.
Parallel Mothers hinges on a classic soap opera contrivance but Almodovar mines genuine tears and pain from the fallout.
Cruz and Smit are well matched as their characters’ relationship ebbs and flows, acknowledging their beautiful imperfections in a world that holds carers to impossibly high standards.
Failures litter every parental journey. Learning from them is the key.
In cinemas from Friday