{"id":21110,"date":"2022-01-12T15:05:28","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T20:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=21110"},"modified":"2022-02-12T15:06:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T20:06:00","slug":"parallel-mothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2022\/01\/12\/parallel-mothers\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s \u2018Parallel Mothers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spanish director Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s gorgeous, haunted and excellent film \u201cParallel Mothers\u201d begins as Janis (Penelope Cruz) has affair with a married forensic anthropologist, which lands her in the hospital maternity ward. There the high-end Madrid magazine photographer, who\u2019s nearing 40, befriends a teen mom-to-be named Ana (Milena Smit). Ana is estranged from her actress mom who chose career over her daughter. Janis aims to have both. Ana gives herself over to motherhood.<\/p>\n<p>The friendship of the single new moms ratchets up in a series of increasingly tense complications and revelations\u2014questions of paternity, rape, a sudden devastating death, romances (I can\u2019t say much more without spoiling the twists)\u2014that make plain Almod\u00f3var\u2019s deep and abiding love of soap opera melodrama.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cL6JDYkRa2g\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Cruz\u2019s intimate expressiveness and the music by Alberto Iglesias make everything feel emotionally on edge\u2014to the point that when Janis is chopping carrots after receiving terrible news it feels like might turn into a slasher flick. In the past, Almod\u00f3var might have turned it into slapstick as well. Instead Almod\u00f3var plays this story realistically, the emotions and losses feel deep and earned and ultimately heartbreaking. It\u2019s a story about the bonds of mothers and daughters, of friends and lovers, of the families we make. And Almod\u00f3var manages to land a complicated but happy ending, full of love.<\/p>\n<p>Remember the forensic anthropologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde)? At the beginning Janis had enlisted his help to uncover the mass grave where fascists murdered her great-grandfather and other men of her childhood hometown during the rise of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (who\u2019s never actually mentioned in the movie). At the film\u2019s end, the narrative comes back around to this and it feels almost like a different movie\u2014a good, but brief one about families shattered by political murders and the generations of wives and daughters of the disappeared carrying that loss.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, (hopefully) weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_21108\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-21108\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/picParallel-mothers002.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/picParallel-mothers002.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Parallel Mothers&quot; starring Milena Smit (left) and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz. (Sony Pictures)\" width=\"620\" height=\"435\" class=\"size-full wp-image-21108\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/picParallel-mothers002.jpg 620w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/picParallel-mothers002-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/picParallel-mothers002-370x260.jpg 370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-21108\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Parallel Mothers&#8221; starring Milena Smit (left) and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz. (Sony Pictures)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spanish director Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s gorgeous, haunted and excellent film \u201cParallel Mothers\u201d begins as Janis (Penelope Cruz) has affair with a married forensic anthropologist, which lands her in the hospital maternity ward. There the high-end Madrid magazine photographer, who\u2019s nearing 40, befriends a teen mom-to-be named Ana (Milena Smit). Ana is estranged from her actress mom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,116],"tags":[953],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21112,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110\/revisions\/21112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}