Movie Review: Parallel Mothers

Pedro Almodóvar’s exploration of motherhood and family, Parallel Mothers (“Madres paralelas”), is a vivid and wonderfully acted piece of filmmaking that, again, showcases the director’s favorite muse – Penélope Cruz – and allows the filmmaker to fully explore his fascination with the stories of women. 

In this story, two pregnant women – Janis (Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit) – meet and befriend each other in the hospital room they share prior to giving birth to their children. Both Janis and Ana are single mothers having unplanned children. Middle-aged Janis is thrilled with the prospect of being a mother while the much younger Ana is much less enthusiastic, almost to the point of regretting her pregnancy. During their hospital stay, the women bond over walks through the hospital corridors, before giving birth to their daughters. Then, after being released from the hospital, the two women reconnect and their relationship, and that of their daughters, begin to evolve and take them all down new and unexpected paths.

While it might not be one of Almodóvar’s most personal and emotional works, it does resonate with many of his usual motifs and concerns (he also wrote the film’s screenplay) as well as offer portrayals of various mother-daughter relationships that play expertly to the central theme of motherhood. As in the case with many of his films, the photography utilized is beautiful. Cinematographer José Luis Alcaine shoots everything in such a lovely way that even the painful scenes float an air of tranquility and peace within them that overcomes some of the negativity of the characters’ emotional states. As edited by Teresa Font, the film moves effortlessly from one arc to another, until the two merge and eventually become a singular tale of crushing anguish and depression. 

Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit in “Parallel Mothers” (“Madres paralelas”).

Both Cruz and Smit are outstanding in their respective roles, with Cruz perhaps carrying the heavier burden of the two as she comes to terms with the fate of Janis’s child and a recently unearthed tragedy in her family’s past that shadows the current traumatic events befalling her. Smit manages to hold her own as well, giving her character an unexpected strength that grows in a rewarding and thoughtful way throughout the film. 

Although Parallel Mothers is undoubtedly an Almodóvar product, there is no question that the film does not revolve around Cruz and her performance. It is an outstanding depiction of motherhood and the joys and crises it can bring to an individual while simultaneously examining the importance of the relationship of family. This fact makes it one of Almodóvar’s more resonating works.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com

An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

@miketyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

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