Review | Venice 2021: Parallel Mothers movie review – Penélope Cruz stars in Pedro Almodóvar’s thought-provoking melodrama, set against Spain’s history of dictatorship
- Venice International Film Festival opens with Spanish director’s latest movie to star Penélope Cruz. She plays a photographer who gives birth after an affair
- Then comes a twist, and a subplot about the legacy of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. This is Almodóvar at his most serious
4/5 stars
Pedro Almodóvar opened the 2021 Venice International Film Festival with Parallel Mothers, a typically thought-provoking melodrama starring his regular muse Penélope Cruz.
It’s 24 years since the Spanish director first cast Cruz in Live Flesh and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Here she plays Janis, a single, successful photographer living in Madrid. When she meets Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a forensic anthropologist, they have a brief but passionate affair that results in a pregnancy. Already married, Arturo backs away and Janis resolves to have the baby on her own.
At the hospital, she meets Ana (Milena Smit), a teenager who is also pregnant. Her baby’s father is not around and her mother is more concerned with her late blooming career as a theatre actress than her daughter’s welfare.
Janis and Ana give birth on the same day, and swap numbers to stay in touch. Then comes the first of the twists as Arturo looks at Janis’ baby and is convinced it’s not his. He requests a paternity test, which Janis refuses, but later, her mind changed, she does a home test. The result is shocking: she is not the biological mother.
If you’re expecting a baby swap melodrama, well, Almodóvar is the sort of director who never delivers the obvious. There is love, jealousy and passion, alongside a deeper subplot – the reason Arturo and Janis first met.