Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Parallel Mothers’ on VOD, Another Fruitful Collaboration Between Melodrama Master Pedro Almodovar and His Muse Penelope Cruz

Now on VOD, Parallel Mothers marks the seventh time Pedro Almodovar has collaborated with Penelope Cruz, and considering the quality of their work, it’s surely among the most creatively lucrative director-star pairings in cinema history. To name the creamiest cream of the crop: All About My Mother, Volver, Pain and Glory and now this, in which Cruz plays a strong, independent single woman who’s also a mother – this is an Almodovar film, so of course she’s a mother – and also is incredibly complicated, especially in regards to a secret she’s nursing. The film earned Cruz an Oscar nomination, and is so stunningly good, it marks Almodovar’s progression from master to outright king of the modern melodrama.

‘PARALLEL MOTHERS’: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “I want to ask you about excavating a grave.” It’s probably not the most common beginning to a romance, but in this case, it makes sense: Janis (Cruz) finishes photographing Arturo (Israel Elejalde) for a magazine shoot, presumably for a piece about his work as a forensic anthropologist. Her great-grandfather and several others were rounded up, executed and buried in an unmarked grave, by fascists during the Spanish Civil War, and she wants them to be exhumed so they can be properly buried by their families. Arturo agrees to help get the ball rolling on the project, and a few months pass, and Janis and Arturo have passionate sex in a hotel room as a curtain billows out the terrace door, and several more months pass and she’s in a hospital room gritting her teeth through contractions. So many things happen before you know it, and here we are – Janis is about to be a mother.

She shares that room with another pregnant woman. Ana (Milena Smit) is still a teenager, but also is on the verge of raising a child without its father. What happened to Arturo? We’ll get to that, but it’s frankly not all that important. Ana moans through a painful contraction and Janis guides her through it, showing innate maternal instinct. Ana’s frightened by the prospect of single motherhood, but Janis is not – her mother and grandmother did it, so she just has it in her. Almodovar cuts between Janis and Ana: Pushing, groaning and finally relief as they hold their newborn daughters to their breasts. Ana visits Janis in her recovery room. Both babies are dealing with very minor complications, but have been taken away for observation. Janis and Ana exchange phone numbers; they’ll be going through the same stuff, so maybe they can talk.

Hang on here – these are important details I’m sharing. Back home, Janis gets help from her housekeeper and an au pair they call “the duchess” because she treats the job like she’s on easy street. Meanwhile, Ana faces the prospect of losing her mother’s help – Teresa (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) is an actress who’s finally got her break, playing the lead in a touring production of Dona Rosita the Spinster. Ana’s relationship with her father is wrought, so that’s not an option. Teresa has the money to hire help but that still leaves Ana alone. She calls Janis and they have a nice chat – things aren’t great for Ana, but they’re on the same page when it comes to being head-over-heels in love with their wonderful baby daughters. Love. Daughters. Love! Daughters!

Back to Janis. Flashback: She ended it with Arturo because he suggests aborting the child because he can’t leave his wife since she’s smack in the middle of her cancer treatment. (Ugh, Arturo, UGH.) But back here in the now, there’s still the matter of the impending grave excavation, and he also wants to see little baby Cecilia. And he does, and is shocked to see that the girl looks nothing like him. Janis’ grandfather had those eyes and that pallor, she says, but it’s an assumption; remember, his far-too-young self ended up in that grave. Arturo suggests a paternity test, but Janis is offended by the notion, because wouldn’t you be? He leaves and she looks at the baby and looks at her again and gets online and orders the swabs and tubes for the DNA test, and I’m getting nervous here. Aren’t you? Are you putting this together?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Lost Daughter. Parallel Mothers and The Lost Daughter feel like parallel movies in some ways. They’re also among the two truly great films of 2021.

Performance Worth Watching: Cruz. She’s never been better, which is saying so, so much.

Memorable Dialogue: Allow me to phrase Ana’s toast to Janis like poetry, because that’s how it’s delivered, for maximum tears-of-joy impact:

“To your grandmother Cecilia,
to your mother,
to your daughter,
and to you.”

Sex and Skin: Two tasteful non-nude sex scenes.

Our Take: Almodovar artfully weaves the story of Ana and Janis through gauzy intuition, hard fact and the space in between them that we call truth, inspiring the usual superlatives for his work: It’s so vivid, so colorful, so dramatic, so funny, so sexy, so heartbreaking, so insightful, so intimately in tune with his female characters, so gifted at inspiring astute performances. Parallel Mothers is absolutely luscious melodrama, delivering one gut punch after another as the plot thicks and thicks and thicks, exploring tragic irony and the tension and release of secrets held and spilled, and mopped up as well as they can be. Cruz fills every cranny of Janis’ bountiful strengths, flaws and capacity for love, to the point where we all but get on our knees and beg this movie to grant her the grace and forgiveness she undoubtedly deserves, for even her most egregious mistakes. Good people suffer enough; there’s no reason for them to suffer needlessly.

The film makes it easy to understand why Janis makes certain decisions for better or worse, and still maintains our empathy. She’s caught in an uncertain present, trapped in a high-pressure, almost existential push-pull between the future (her daughter, her familial legacy) and the past (the lost men and independent women who preceded her). So the film’s thematic foundations are sound, even within the wild narrative Almodovar builds around it, rife with comedio-calamitous turns that throw us for emotional loops – and characters dedicated to doing the right, righteous thing, no matter how painful it might be. Cruz is our entry point, compassionate, strong, sensitive, crafting Janis as a series of jazz chords, rich in harmonic resonance, balancing passion and intellect, classical and progressive. It’s an unforgettable performance in a film that’s an impassioned portrait of the joys and travails of motherhood, perhaps like no other.

Our Call: Parallel Mothers is another triumph from Almodovar. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

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