Parallel Mothers (2021)
(Madres paralelas)
Country: SP
Technical: col 123m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde
Synopsis:
When a photographer solicits help from a forensic anthropologist in opening up an unmarked grave of Civil War victims from her village, she sets in train a sequence of events that will affect the next generation as much as the last, and will also involve happenstance, death and cover up.
Review:
In his fifth decade as a feature film-maker, Almodóvar shows no sign of running out of energy. As in Pain and Glory, his protagonist is preoccupied with past events, but it is rare that his stories take on so political a slant (Bad Education perhaps being the only other example). We have the doubling and hospital setting of Talk to Her, and the often-present theme of maternity, particularly in the films with la Cruz. Hitchcockian motifs abound, in close-ups on details (a computer mouse, a billowing curtain) and in the modernist musical accompaniment of Alberto Iglesias. Above all it is the maturity and confidence with which he lays out his material, however far-fetched it might be, that permits us to relax and be transported.
(Madres paralelas)
Country: SP
Technical: col 123m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde
Synopsis:
When a photographer solicits help from a forensic anthropologist in opening up an unmarked grave of Civil War victims from her village, she sets in train a sequence of events that will affect the next generation as much as the last, and will also involve happenstance, death and cover up.
Review:
In his fifth decade as a feature film-maker, Almodóvar shows no sign of running out of energy. As in Pain and Glory, his protagonist is preoccupied with past events, but it is rare that his stories take on so political a slant (Bad Education perhaps being the only other example). We have the doubling and hospital setting of Talk to Her, and the often-present theme of maternity, particularly in the films with la Cruz. Hitchcockian motifs abound, in close-ups on details (a computer mouse, a billowing curtain) and in the modernist musical accompaniment of Alberto Iglesias. Above all it is the maturity and confidence with which he lays out his material, however far-fetched it might be, that permits us to relax and be transported.
(Madres paralelas)
Country: SP
Technical: col 123m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde
Synopsis:
When a photographer solicits help from a forensic anthropologist in opening up an unmarked grave of Civil War victims from her village, she sets in train a sequence of events that will affect the next generation as much as the last, and will also involve happenstance, death and cover up.
Review:
In his fifth decade as a feature film-maker, Almodóvar shows no sign of running out of energy. As in Pain and Glory, his protagonist is preoccupied with past events, but it is rare that his stories take on so political a slant (Bad Education perhaps being the only other example). We have the doubling and hospital setting of Talk to Her, and the often-present theme of maternity, particularly in the films with la Cruz. Hitchcockian motifs abound, in close-ups on details (a computer mouse, a billowing curtain) and in the modernist musical accompaniment of Alberto Iglesias. Above all it is the maturity and confidence with which he lays out his material, however far-fetched it might be, that permits us to relax and be transported.