PARALLEL MOTHERS (15)
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Bafta-winning director Pedro Almodóvar mines tears and tension from a soapy script in his eighth collaboration with Penélope Cruz.
Here, the All About My Mother director’s muse is Janis, a 39-year-old photographer from Madrid who is snapping dashing archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde) for a magazine.
After the shoot, sparks fly as she asks for help organising the excavation of a mass grave, where the bodies of family members were secretly dumped during the Spanish Civil War.
The couple embark on a frantic affair but split when Janis falls pregnant and Arturo refuses to leave his wife. In the maternity ward, Janis hits it off with her room-mate Ana (Milena Smit, right), a teenage mum who is as afraid of motherhood as Janis is excited.
The two women have their daughters on the same night, but tragedy and an unlikely twist will see their paths cross again as they embark on their journeys as single mothers.
If this was an EastEnders storyline, you’d be rolling your eyes. But the taut performances, sharp dialogue and stylish direction keep the tension bubbling away.
Almodovar attempts to link Janis’s shocking predicament with Spain’s refusal to engage with its own tragic past and it never quite pays off. But this is another classy and quietly gripping drama from the Spanish master.