Parallel Mothers (2021): Two for One

Janis is a Spanish fashion photographer – perhaps the most beautiful photographer in the world. She doesn’t know it. But we do. She’s played by academy award winner Penelope Cruz, for goodness sake!  The new movie Parallel Mothers is not about the world of fashion or being pretty, however. But it is Cruz at the top of her game in a drama that’s centered around her character. That’s reason enough to see it. 

Another reason is that Parallel Mothers is written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, who has been at the top of his formidable powers for more than twenty years now. Between 1999 and 2019, he wrote and directed eight pictures that have ranged in quality between terrific and absolutely phenomenal, from the Oscar-winning All About My Mother through Pain and Glory, measured against just one mediocrity, the rather silly I’m So Excited (2013).  Eight superlative movies out of nine is an amazing run for any director; and Parallel Mothers, I’m happy to report, is yet another in that first category.

Parallel Mothers is, as the title suggests, a movie about mothers and motherhood. A secondary theme, perhaps equally or even more important to the film’s creator, contemplates a reckoning with the legacy of political oppression and state sanctioned murder dating back to the Spanish Civil War and the long dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, which ended with his death in 1975. The film was made in 2021, over 80 years after the civil war and more than 45 years subsequent to the death of Franco, from which the restoration of democratic governance followed. It is a reckoning long overdue. More on that later.

This being an Almodóvar picture, you might expect that its concerns cover a lot more territory as well. And you’d be correct. It’s a film about selfishness and selflessness, about ancestors living and deceased, about acknowledging truth and righting wrongs, and about the power of all kinds of love – maternal, familial, romantic and even patriotic – to effect change.

The movie covers a period of three years. As it opens, Janis meets Arturo [Israel Elejalde], while photographing a publicity piece. One thing leads to another, and the next thing we know Janis finds herself pregnant. Although Arturo is in love with her, he can’t commit to acknowledge his paternity. He has valid reasons, which Janis understands but is nonetheless unhappy about; so she breaks it off with him.  She plans to have their baby regardless. 

Jump forward six months or so and we find Janis in a hospital labor and delivery room along with her much younger roommate, Ana (newcomer Milena Smit). Ana is only seventeen, while Janis is nearing forty. She knows what she wants and is looking forward to motherhood; Ana is confused, unsure even about the identity of the baby’s father, and unhappy. She feels forlorn and unwanted, having been raised by parents who are, let’s say, less than devoted. By contrast, Janis seems satisfied, established in her career and well-grounded in her life. Not that she’s perfect by any means, as we come to understand later on. Despite their very different stations in life and levels of experience and maturity, the two single mothers form a strong bond, and their infants are delivered almost simultaneously.

Their lives intertwine in surprising ways over time. Eventually, somewhat suddenly, things get really complicated. I can’t describe the plot twists without giving too much away, but you can expect dramatic turns in the lives of both Ana and Janis that are both heart-rending and tragic. Almodóvar has chosen to structure this part of the film as a tense, psychological thriller. Janis in particular finds herself facing an agonizing test, her indecisive response to which is mortifying and ignoble. Almodóvar notes that this dilemma reveals Janis to be a more complex, contradictory, and even mean-spirited character than she initially appears. “She is a very difficult character to play because she always has more than one face, until her sense of guilt and the shame provoked in her by the lie she is living make her explode.” This crisis is at the heart of Parallel Mothers and affects not just Janis but Ana and everyone in their respective orbits. 

It also reveals the depth and consummate artistry of Penelope Cruz. Says Almodóvar: “[Janis] is the most difficult character Penelope has played to date, with me [they have made seven films together] and without me. And probably the most painful. The result is splendid; as always, Penelope has given everything to it.” Cruz noted that the rehearsals for this movie lasted over four months, which were very important for her because it was so emotional. Interviewed by Terry Gross on NPRs Fresh Air recently, she said “Milena and I, we were touched and affected by the script and the characters and what happens to them that we would start reading a scene with Pedro, and we would immediately start crying.”  But as Almodovar pointed out to her, those were the actors’ tears, not necessarily the characters’. “In a situation like the one [Janis] goes through, I would be crying like twenty times a day. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t. She expresses that in a very different way.” AlI I can say, thinking back on Cruz’s performance, is that it is a wonderous thing to behold. As a result, Cruz has already won awards for best actress at the Venice and  Palm Springs film festivals and numerous other nominations.  If she doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actress, I’ll eat [one of my] hats!

Twenty-four-year-old Milena Smit’s performance is also terrific - more surprising in some ways than that of her co-star, because we’ve never seen her before. Almodovar says that she is “the great revelation of the film.” Compared to Janis, she is not just young but a relatively innocent adolescent forced to transform quickly from adolescence to a mature and responsible young woman. There is a third woman, too, who figures into Parallel Mothers’ exploration of maternity: Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), Ana’s mother. Sánchez-Gijón is perhaps best known in the US for her role in A Walk In the Clouds (1995) opposite Keanu Reeves, but she is a veteran of more than fifty films and numerous TV series. Teresa, by her own admission, has not been a very good mother to Ana. It is not that she doesn’t care, but as an actress she always prioritized her professional aspirations over motherhood. Early in Ana’s life, Teresa transferred parental responsibility to her ex-husband, who was not particularly nurturing, but at least more stable - until Ana became pregnant, that is. Hardly a solid role model for a struggling teenage mother, she is nonetheless still Ana’s mother, someone Ana needs in her life.  

But as I suggested earlier, Parallel Mothers might be seen as two movies in one. In addition to the domestic maternal dramas found in the stories of Janis and Ana, Almodóvar wants to dramatize what the legacy of Franco’s murderous dictatorship has meant and still represents for Spain. This is a history of what’s been called political genocide, a history that was suppressed and denied while the regime was in power and largely ignored for many years after. 

Following Franco’s death, both rightist and leftist parties agreed that it would be best to avoid confronting the torture, mass killings and political repression that characterized his regime, in the interest of fostering reconciliation and a smooth transition to democracy. Their informal agreement, known as the Pact of Forgetting, eschewed investigation or prosecution of those responsible for atrocities and human rights violations. This agreement was formalized a couple years later with the 1977 Amnesty Law. Over the last twenty years, criticism of the Amnesty Law has steadily been increasing. In 2000, an NGO called the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) was formed by a group of forensic archaeologists, and anthropologists to collect testimonials about Franco’s so-called ‘White Terror’, to identify the many sites of mass graves around the country, and to exhume and identify, to the extent possible, the bodies of murdered people dumped there. 

All of which brings us back to Arturo – Janis’s lover and the father of her child. Arturo is a forensic archeologist working with ARMH. After the photo shoot alluded to in the first scene of Parallel Mothers, Janis takes the opportunity to ask for Arturo’s help in unearthing a site near her hometown where she believes her great grandfather was murdered and buried during the White Terror, along with most of the town’s menfolk. Even eighty years later, the residue of that atrocity has left a large hole in the hearts of the victims’ families and descendants, as Janis attests. Arturo agrees to do what he can to help, but it will take some time to get approval, funding etc.

Toward the end of the picture, Arturo reappears with news that the project has been approved. Reconstructing and documenting what happened so long ago through testimony, DNA evidence and other clues is a difficult, painstaking task. For example, Janis’s grandmother was only three years old when her father was taken away. Her primary recollections are how scary it was when the soldiers came and how, when her daddy was taken away, he was holding her toy rattle – which she never saw again.  As the movie concludes, the excavation has uncovered a number of the remains. A large group of the townspeople and descendants of the dead walk out to the former killing field to honor their ancestors. And to reflect on their tragic shared history.  

It was a very moving moment for me (although I’d imagine this ending is even more meaningful and affecting for a Spanish audience) - a moment that brings home why it is so important to engage with our history, particularly relatively modern history, and to confront the dark, difficult, and even shameful actions that may be found there. Because only by such reflection and acknowledgement can society move forward and set about making things better.  This is not just a Spanish question. Remarkably, the simple idea of acknowledging historical truth is now a highly controversial item right here in the United States. 

The problem with the two-movies-in-one idea, for me anyway, is the sense I had that the Janis/Ana maternal drama on the one hand, and the recovery of historical memory part on the other did not seem well melded. I liked each piece a lot, but they seemed scotch taped together. Making the whole less than the sum of its parts.

Then, as I was writing this, I read Anthony Lane’s review of Parallel Mothers in the latest issue of The New Yorker [January 3 & 10, 2022]. Lane saw a parallel between the Spanish consciousness in the post-Franco period and Janis’s response to the problem at the center of her and Ana’s situation. Both cases involved magical thinking.   Mother Spain and Mother Janis were both trying to deal with a most uncomfortable truth by pretending it did not exist, hoping that in time ‘the problem’ would just go away. In both cases: nope.

I think Lane is right. My appreciation of the movie has deepened as a result. But I still think Almodóvar ought to have woven his themes together more seamlessly. I confess that I’m not clear just how.  

That said, Parallel Mothersis still very much a beautiful, absorbing, provocative film, with an intriguing, twisty story, truly remarkable acting (including one of Penelope Cruz’s most memorable performances,) lovely cinematography and – as with all Almodóvar pictures – unsurpassed attention to mise en scene. I highly recommend it. 

I hold Almodovar to an unusually high standard because, well, because so many of his movies are so great. From any other writer/director I would have graded Parallel Mothers with an A.  For an Almodóvar film, however, it gets an A- .  Go see it.

123 minutes    Rated R [for “some sexuality”]

Grade: A-

Currently screening in New York and L.A.  Rolling out to theaters nationwide, beginning January 7, 2022. For example, in the SF Bay area: 1/7 in Embarcadero Center Cinema and Alamo Drafthouse in SF; 1/14 in Berkeley, San Jose and San Rafael; 1/28 in Santa Cruz and Regal Stonestown Galleria, SF.  Check your local listings. 

Streaming date not yet announced.