Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde,
Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma
With Parallel Mothers, Pedro Almodóvar combines his two great cinematic loves –
Hitchcock and the melodrama – to at times riveting effect in a movie
with a premise that in many hands might resemble a Lifetime movie of the
week. Unfortunately this melodramatic thriller is interrupted by an
ill-fitting subplot concerning the legacy of the Spanish Civil War. A
story that should really have a movie of its own is treated as an
afterthought, wrapped up in a final 20 minutes that proves a misjudged
coda to the movie we've just witnessed.
Photographer Janis Martinez (Penélope Cruz) enlists the
professional aid of archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde) in
excavating a Civil War mass grave that she believes contains the corpse
of her great-grandfather. While working together the two become
romantically involved, with Janis getting pregnant and deciding to have
the baby against Arturo's wishes. While in hospital she befriends
another expectant mother, teenager Ana (Milena Smit). The two
have their kids at the exact same time and promise to stay in
touch.
When Arturo meets the child he didn't want, he is convinced he isn't
the father. The baby looks suspiciously South American, which Janis puts
down to her father, whom she never met, hailing from Venezuala. Arturo
asks for a paternity test, which Janis refuses. In the following days,
Janis finds herself haunted by the idea that the baby may not actually
be hers, and decides to take a maternity test, which confirms her
fear.
I don’t think it's a spoiler to reveal the obvious point that Janis and
Ana's babies were swapped in the hospital, and there's no real way to
discuss the film without broaching this point, as it informs everything
that's interesting about the movie. In similar fashion to Maggie
Gyllenhaal's recent drama
The Lost Daughter, Parallel Mothers is another story of a mother keeping a
cruel secret from another mother. Having grown attached to the child she
brought home from the hospital, Janis is unwilling to do a trade with
Ana. Instead, perhaps out of guilt, she invites the young mother to live
with her as a nanny.
In this manner, Almodóvar delivers a unique twist on Hitchcock's
Vertigo. Janis's deception of Ana is similar to that of Kim Novak's with Jimmy
Stewart, but instead of concealing her own identity she's hiding that of
her child. And as with Novak, her deception is done out of love, which
makes it ultimately all the more cruel.
Cruz gives arguably her finest performance in many a year here, and
Parallel Mothers is a case of a director/star combo so in
sync at this point that it makes the filmmaking invisible and organic.
Almodóvar knows his leading lady is capable of speaking volumes with her
expressive face, and so much of the detail of
Parallel Mothers' plot is left unsaid. There's barely a word of exposition here.
Instead we follow the narrative through Cruz's physical performance,
which becomes increasingly tightly wound to the point where you expect
her to start having a nose bleed from the stress of her secret.
As much as Parallel Mothers works as a Hitchcockian
thriller crossed with what was once reductively labelled a "woman's
picture," there are several gaps of logic in which people and
institutions behave in an unrealistic manner in service of the plot. For
a start, how could Janis and Ana mix up their babies when they look so
unalike? Would something as serious as the results of a negative
maternity test really be delivered through an email rather than a
personal phone call? Another stumbling block for the film is the lesbian
affair that develops between Janis and Ana, which adds little to the
plot but a bit of sensationalism, and both Janis and the movie seem
oblivious to the uncomfortable detail that the latter is a minor.
But what really disrupts Parallel Mothers is that Civil
War subplot. It's forgotten about for most of the movie, and when it
pops back up in the climax it's the most jarring turn I can recall a
movie taking in quite some time. I understand that Spain's suppression
of the Civil War is supposed to be analogous to Janis's behaviour, but
it's a far too weighty subject to be shoe-horned in such a manner. It's
akin to Hitchcock ending Vertigo by saying "If you thought
those two were dodgy, wait until I tell you about this Stalin
guy."
