Parallel Mothers(Spanish)
Starring Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit and features Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Rating: ** ½
It’s not what she plays in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye but HOW she plays her character that fetched Jessica Chastain the Oscar for best actress , upturning the more popular choice of Penelope Cruz.
Cruz is a very attractive women. Evidently the Spanish king of surreal spins Padro Almodovar seems to think so. He has directed Ms Cruz in 6 other films. The 7th is probably the least satisfying.A mishmash of lineage explorations and wildly improbably soap-opera styled coincidences Parallel Mothers left me bored, exasperated and finally hugely disappointed. What on earth are the citics raving about?! The film is a travesty, a mockery of all that the director-actress duo has achieved earlier specially in Volver which was vivacious canny and compelling.
Parallel Mothers is way too enamoured by its campy-ness. Almodovar flirts with the most fatuous improbabilities and coincidences. Even then the film would have been an oddball experiment with whimsical themes if the director, hellbent on cramming the narrative with history and melodrama , had not force-fed the Spanish Civil War into the lurching heaving plot(you know that feeling with your face on the toiletbowl?).
The film feels unreal (and not in a good way) from the start. Janis(Penelope Cruz) has crazy afternoon s*x with anthropologist with Arturo(Israel Elejalde)whom everyone describes as wildly handsome, attractive etc. But that must be on paper only. Arturo here had me wondering why a woman as attractive and successful as Janis would waste her time on something so banal.(Come to think of it I felt the same way about the film).She is soon pregnant with his child.
In case you think this film is about Janis’s relationship with Arturo then think again. The film is about the two mothers played by Penelope Cruz and the waif-like Milena Smit who bond during birth . Their babies get swapped .Soon the sacrificial sobbings kick into the womb view with both the ladies lurching into the maternity mode with valid birthrights and pallid emotions .
Very soon one of the babies is ‘cot’ napping while the two beautiful mothers make love on the crinkly carpet .
The plot coils and uncoils with horrendous strenuousness. Almodovar is clearly not interested in investing in the mother-daughter dynamics beyond a point , although there are three pairs of mothers daughters trying to find a steady place to anchor their feelings
Nothing works in this deadend drama of dogged dispassion. The plot is cluttured with scenic nullity. Beautiful shots of Madrid cafes and the Spanish countryside do not take away from the sense of sterility that swamps the characters’ desperate emotions.
I wish the plot had focused on the two young reluctant mothers and how they learnt o be good mothers rather than on how to be good lovers.
At the end a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War is excavated. One of the two babies is dead and the audience is dismayed by the fogginess of Pedro Almodovar’s vision, although no one is saying it out aloud.
