Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Quick Impressions:
It’s pretty hard to beat a Pedro Almodóvar movie starring Penélope Cruz. I’ve been excited to see Parallel Mothers for a while, but I didn’t expect it to be my favorite movie of 2021. (I did just see it, so I might be overstating how much I liked it, but if it’s not my favorite film of 2021, it’s very close.)
In general, my husband and I love Almodóvar’s films. (Pain and Glory was perhaps his favorite movie of 2019. He found it so moving and was thrilled when Antonio Banderas ended up with a Best Actor nomination. I liked Pain and Glory, too, but not nearly as much as this.)
When I saw the trailer for Parallel Mothers, I expected it to be tonally more like Pain and Glory, mature and contemplative. But honestly the film surprised me by tapping into the dark zaniness of some of his earlier work. (We went on an Aldomóvar jag not long after seeing Volver, buying or renting every film of his we could get our hands on, so we’ve seen most of his movies.) Parallel Mothers is mature and contemplative, too, though. It’s moving, fun, suspenseful, unhinged, terrifying, nightmarish, weirdly romantic, and full of unexpected twists. (Well, they were unexpected to my husband. I suspected most of them, but I suspected them as possibilities, not inevitabilities.) However, in addition to all of this, the film addresses a grave subject in a beautiful, moving, and highly effective way. I came away quite impressed with the artistry of this movie.
I highly doubt that Cruz will get an Oscar nomination for her work here, but she is deserving of one. The film works as well as it does mainly because of her. (For long stretches, it has kind of a Hitchcockian quality of unhinged psychological terror, and that works almost entirely because of her performance. If she didn’t play the role the way she does, I think the audience would lose the emotional heft of what’s happening, the height of the terror.)
The Good:
Like I said, when I saw the trailer, I thought, “Okay, so this story will be measured and mature.” As the movie began, I confidently reflected, “This is not going to do anything that smacks of sensationalism like…oh. Oh. It is going to do that. It’s going to do exactly that. Okay then.”
In this movie, Cruz’s character lives out every woman’s worst nightmare again and again and again. (It’s kind of like you think, “Oh no! That’s every woman’s worst nightmare.” Then the next thing happens, and you realize, “Oh no, actually this is every woman’s worst nightmare.” And then the next thing happens, and you say, “Oh yeahhh. Actually this is much worse. This is a classic nightmare scenario, too.”)
There are not enough psychological thrillers about motherhood. Granted, there are a lot. But I just think, personally, that there can never be enough because motherhood is so terrifying. Watching Parallel Mothers brought back flashes of the discomfort I felt when I was trying to get pregnant/trying to stay pregnant/unable to stay pregnant.
I had baby fever pretty bad. I knew something was a bit wrong when I watched Changeling (the 2008 Clint Eastwood film starring Angelina Jolie?) and thought, “She should just be happy she has a child. She needs to quit being so picky about if it’s the same one she lost.” (It was just a stray thought. Later, I demanded of myself, “What the hell, Sarah! Have you lost your entire mind?”) (Then I distracted myself by reading about the Wineville Chicken Coop murders in old newspapers on microfilm.) Not too long after that, I saw my son’s baby brother asleep in his crib and thought, “I could just pick up that baby and keep him, and raise him, and he would be mine.” (This is much less creepy than it sounds. We had just had an “if something happens to us would you take both boys so the baby doesn’t have to be without his big brother” discussion. I was not planning to kidnap my husband’s ex-wife’s baby. After a very distressing and baffling hysterical pregnancy (and fruitless attempts to conceive), I was coming to terms with the fact that adoption might be the way to go and actually wouldn’t be the problem I had imagined. (Babies are so cute. Once you get attached to them, you love them whether they have your DNA or not.) (I had read Graham Swift’s extremely disturbing novel Waterland a few years before that and found some elements baffling, and by this time, I was reflecting back on it often, understanding it better.)
Something went wrong with all of my pregnancies—a hysterical pregnancy, a(n unexplained extremely) premature birth, a miscarriage, a pregnancy riddled with one health problem after another. When I was about twenty-five weeks pregnant with my son, I saw blood one day and became convinced that I was in labor (because that’s what happened with my daughter). We got to the ER, and I realized that I had not actually dealt with the trauma of the first pregnancy. I’d just pushed it all out of my mind. I also realized I was not in labor. They put a contraction belt on me, and I started to have a panic attack (because that, too, was what had happened before).
I remember trying to explain to the nurse, “I realize now I’m not in labor. Can I please take that off? I’m not having contractions, and I’m having a physical response to it, and I’m worried my own panic is going to cause a problem.”
She said, “It’s just on there to help you. It won’t cause a problem.”
I said, “Yes, I know, but I’m worried that my own anxiety will cause a problem. Wearing it makes me feel like something is wrong.”
She said, “Just tell yourself that it’s good and that it’s helping you.”
I said, “I know it’s not hurting anything, but I’m worried that my body’s own panic response will hurt something.”
We kept at this for a while. I tried to stay so calm, but I could feel my heart beating faster and faster. When the doctor came in the room and overheard the exchange, she said, “Let her take it off.” And I was so immensely grateful to that doctor.
(My own ob-gyn was very understanding. She said, “Of course you remember what happened that night. I still remember what happened that night!” It was a pretty big deal for her, too. She made tough decisions quickly and saved my baby.)
Having babies and caring for newborns is such a traumatic, stressful, difficult time. (I’m very glad that phase of my life is over.) (I mean, I guess technically it’s not, but as far as I’m concerned, it is.) I feel like that particular part of life can make anyone feel rattled. It’s a stressful time.
So then when things start to go wrong, you’re already in a harried, addled state of mind.
For Janis (Penélope Cruz’s character in this film) new motherhood plays out like a horror movie. At least three things happen to her (in succession) that would fill every mother with panic and dread. Any one of them could believably be a new mother’s greatest fear. The entire plot of this film is the stuff of nightmares. Pretty much everything happens to her except finding out that her baby is a xenomorph and she’s a clone. She doesn’t have to blow anybody out an airlock. But I mean, what happens to her is nightmarish and unending.
I remember when my daughter was a baby, and she would bump her head, and then I’d worry, and then she’d see me worried and look worried, and then I’d see she looked worried and worry…My husband would come home and realize, “Y’all are feeding off each other’s worry.” When you’re a loving mother, little things happen, and you tell yourself, “It will be okay. I’m worrying for nothing. It’s really all okay.”
What happens to Janis is not okay. Her determined denial does not surprise me because it seems impossible to cope with such revelations. I find her behavior relatable (though undoubtedly concerning).
So she discovers one terrible thing. (By the time it finally happens, it’s not a surprise.) Then she discovers a second terrible thing. (This is harder to accept because now that the movie has made the first move, it’s harder to know what it’s capable of. Something highly bizarre might happen. I wasn’t surprised to hear the second bit of disturbing news, but it took me a long time to accept it completely at face value. (You never know now. The movie might be up to something now. It might lean into being a thriller even harder.) And then another surprising thing happens (from my husband’s point of view. At the point when a certain character is reintroduced, I completely expected this to happen because Janis seems to be living in a state of, “Maybe this can all work out somehow,” and this seems like the most logical way. You watch and think, “Hmm, well this is truly a terrible idea.” And then you think, “UNLESS IT’S BRILLIANT!” (But it’s not. It’s a terrible idea, at least in the way that Janis first lets it unfold.)
What makes the movie so good is that this terrible psychological thriller is happening—but only to Penélope Cruz. She’s the only one experiencing these events in this way. Ana (Milena Smit) is having a difficult year, too, but from her point of view, what is happening is completely different.
The movie is aptly titled because not only do you get Janis and Ana as parallel mothers, but you also get (as further parallels) their mothers, to a degree their own relationship, and the mothers of all the fathers who disappeared years ago.
This last bit is the aspect of the movie that elevates it. I’m not sure if the psychological thriller part would be interesting to someone who wasn’t a woman (or even to a woman who doesn’t have some trauma surrounding motherhood). (I suppose a viewer might be sustained by interest in Penélope Cruz. There’s one scene where she says, “Give me an hour to make myself presentable.” Then we cut to an hour later and she’s indescribably gorgeous. I thought, “Man, I wish if people gave me an hour, I could make myself look like Penélope Cruz!” She’s beautiful, and she knows how to do her make-up! Cinephiles are going to be interested in her performance. That’s true.) But the film is definitely elevated by the inclusion of the communal grave storyline.
And here’s why it’s so great. I’ve seen a lot of films (particularly foreign films; this strikes me as a very European thing to do) that include some weighty historical lesson along with an otherwise more character-driven storyline. But this film does a particularly good job of making the weighty historical part tie neatly into the character-driven story.
On the way home, I explained the timing of Janis’s revelation to my husband in a way that I think really gets to the bottom of her character (and ties both aspects of the film together), but I can’t do that here in a spoiler free review. But identifying the bodies in that communal grave has absolutely everything to do with giving meaning to the present-day plot of the movie.
All of the characters in the film are intriguing, though without question, Cruz carries the movie. I felt consistently intrigued by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Ana’s mother Teresa (based on Ana’s description and her initial appearance, she seems so sinister, but she’s really not so bad). Arturo (Isreal Elejalde) gets an interesting character arc, too. (It frustrates me that everything seems to work out so well for him, but on the other hand, I guess that’s convenient.) I wish we could see the same story from Ana’s point of view. It would be so different. It would probably even be a different genre. (For her, the story begins in such a dark place, gets darker, gets darker, and then she’s almost granted wish fulfillment. It’s a little eerie.)
As usual in Almodóvar’s recent films, I liked the cinematography a lot. I was so engrossed in the story and in Cruz’s performance that I didn’t notice particular shots (except for all the photographs Cruz takes herself of shoes and purses), but I like the clean, colorful look of José Luis Alcaine’s cinematography. I would like to pay more attention to Janis’s camera on a second watch. (I mean, I noticed that she stops taking pictures of Cecilia and begins to photograph a mind-numbingly endless parade of shoes, but I’m sure there’s more to be noticed than that.) Strangely, I didn’t notice the score, which is odd because I seem to remember loving the score of Pain and Glory. Maybe I was just distracted.
Best Scene:
My favorite moment of the entire movie comes when Janis tells Ana something like, “This wouldn’t be a favor. I’m almost taking advantage of you.” No kidding. I love the expression on Cruz’s face as she delivers these lines. (It’s her performance that makes the movie work. For someone in such extreme distress, she actually plays the part in a relatively subtle way. She’s so deeply crazed but masks it pretty well. And Cruz has to show us both that she’s deeply crazed and that she’s masking it.)
Best Scene Visually:
I love the teasing ambiguity of some of the late scenes. Everybody seems to be holding hands with everyone (even in the grave), and there’s all this talk of going home and siblings. I like the implication that the past is finished, but the present is ongoing. What has happened to Janis was a nightmare. It felt like a nightmare. But she can wake up. The men in the grave are dead. What happened to Janis was discombobulating, but what happened to the men in the grave is much worse. Things in the present day can be sorted out. There’s no need for them to be as horrible and scary as they initially feel as long as everyone has good intentions and approaches things with an open heart.
Best Action Sequence:
For some reason I was so charmed by the part where Cecilia looks at her shoe. What a cute baby! I also enjoy the interlude where Janis photographs shoes, purses, and lipstick. (I wanted to ask her, “How many shoes do you think you’ll have to photograph before you feel better? Do you think photographing these shoes will fix anything?”)
I also love the scene when Janis wakes in the middle of the night in a horrified sweat and looks so frantic.
The Negatives:
The men in that grave have an awful lot of identifying features. A glass eye, a baby rattle, gold teeth, a whale bone leg, a silver tongue, an amulet containing the left toe of John the Baptist! (Okay, I made up some of those!) My husband thinks this is totally realistic. Maybe it is. It just seems like a staggering number of identifying features for one family to me!
I was lying when I said I was happy for Arturo. I think he’s a big jerk. (Looking back over the review, I guess I didn’t say I was happy for him. Well that’s right! I’m not. I think it’s a fascinating feature of the story that things work out so well for him, but I have some complaints about his behavior.)
You know, there’s another way this film could have gone that would have been just as horrific. What if Janis has that scene with Arturo, and then she starts having suspicions, and then it turns out that her suspicions are baseless, but she still can’t believe it. Welcome to post-partum depression. (I was extremely fortunate that mine never manifested in that way. It’s bad enough to have it manifest in any way!) That’s a psychological thriller, too (and probably a more common story).
I really question the fact that Arturo can tell what he does when he does (in the way he goes about getting that information). I think that is absolutely baseless. I think that Arturo could think the same thing and have it not be the case at all because it’s simply convenient for him to think so, and the mind can play tricks on you. I dislike this element of the film, the implication that such feelings and instincts are always unbiased and correct. (The explanation that Janis initially gives is actually perfectly logical and reasonable given the known facts.)
Also—in a bit of criticism not exactly directed at the film—this movie made me wish I could take more pictures. I used to take so many that it seemed almost deranged, but these days I have nothing to photograph. With both children in school and my mother (who could be reliably depended upon to dress fabulously and dance through the room with a pineapple on her head when needed) unavailable for pictures, I’m frustrated to be getting shockingly little use out of my new camera. Maybe one day we’ll be able to go to the zoo again or something. I don’t know! I also suddenly have the wild desire to discover and dig up graves, but that’s going to have to wait. I’ve got a lot going on right now as it is.
Overall:
When Penélope Cruz won Best Supporting Actress back in 2009, I chose to take it as a good omen (because that’s my daughter’s name, and she was in the NICU at the time). I wouldn’t expect an Oscar nomination for her this year, but I can recommend this movie. It’s horrifically suspenseful and unsettling, but a very neatly crafted piece of fiction, and one that tells a profound truth.