Review of the film "Parallel Mothers" - an insinuating melodrama by Pedro Almovar with one of the best roles of Penelope Cruz
Pedro Almodovar talks about motherhood and historical memory in the language of soap operas.
Parallel lines do not intersect, this is stated by Euclid's law and annoying advertising of the 2000s: such conventions are not written to Pedro Almodovar, so those very mothers from the name, having met once, will no longer part. Janice (Penelope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smith) are debutantes in labor, each single, each expecting a girl. Acquaintance on the threshold of parenthood will grow into friendship and love of all scales and shades. Glossy photographer Janice (a hippie mother named her daughter after Joplin) mentors teenage girl Ana, whose mother, in turn, is passionate about acting. The episode with the inattentive attitude in the maternity hospital (the children were mixed up!) is framed by the general history of the country and the trauma of the Franco regime: Janice is looking for an opportunity to exhume a mass grave in her native settlement so that women can bury their men - fathers, grandfathers and husbands.
Almodovar has become more sentimental over the years, and this film, shown at the Venice Film Festival, was branded by many as a weekend soap opera. The plot and staging of the tape is extremely simple and in some places not as inventive as the previous works of the author: random meetings, betrayals, secrets, resentment, violence and a kitchen knife in the hands of Penelope Cruz. But this melodrama is deceptive and does not pull "Mothers" to the bottom of the daily broadcast, but becomes a simple film language of the generation (generations) to which the tape is dedicated.
The "return" of the director also began with the graves and the cleaning of the cemetery, here the mass grave in the opening scene is the mournful ending of some and the start of the path of others. The whole truth and all the secrets are hidden in the ground, and whoever does not know his last name does not know himself either. The idea is either too conservative and traditional, or eternal: the rest of the dead is most important for the living. The strength of the clan, the strength of the place, the strength of love (however prosaic, so unshakable) - in torn leather slippers, in a hidden rattle or any artifact that makes bones a kindred person.
The unhurried development of the plot of "Parallel Mothers" is akin to the gradual putting things in order at home. The picture begins with an endless mess: the ancestors are not buried, the children are mixed up, the lovers are separated. Scene after scene, this worldly chaos will be organized into a harmonious family portrait. Everything will be spoken out, and what has been said will be forgiven, and anxious hearts will finally find peace. The fairy godmother of this farce becomes Janice: Penelope Cruz won the prize in Venice for the best role and is likely to receive more than one award. A woman (always with a capital letter) at Almodovar and the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene, and a holy martyr, and a worker, and an heiress. But, unlike other mothers of Pedro (for example, also Cruz, but in Pain and Glory), the heroines here are far from unequivocally romanticizing the looking eyes, and solidarity is born from common wounds and abscesses. Their imperfection only underscores the multitasking and amplitude from red carpet to caring for the elderly: Janice, who cooks dinner in a T-shirt that says “we should all be feminists,” speaks most eloquently about this.
Ashes to ashes: after a series of sometimes ridiculous, sometimes painful, and sometimes happy days, the earth will embrace those who once said goodbye. It sounds naive in retelling, but Almodovar managed to arrange this idea much better than this text.
This article was sponsored by Tatiana Massa
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