Parallel Mothers (Review)

The new film by Spanish director Pedro Almodòvar won the award for best female interpretation (Penelope Cruz) at the Venice Film Festival 2021. It is a very intense and dramatic film that has its roots in the generational clash between parents and children in the background of which there is the history for the recovery of the memory of the republican dead during the Spanish civil war.


The protagonists are Janis and Ana, two women who find themselves sharing the same room in the maternity ward of the same hospital. Janis is a photographer in her forties and the love for her family and her roots lead her to undertake a search for the grave of her great-grandfather who was shot during the Spanish Civil War. Ana is a teenager who plans to cut off relations with her parents, run away from home and take over her life. In the few hours before giving birth, Janis and Ana discover they share the fate and courage of being single mothers willing to give birth to their children without the support of their partners who abandoned them after a casual relationship. Janis and Ana give birth on the same day and the few hours they spend together create an indissoluble bond between them destined to have tragic consequences when the two find themselves by chance in Madrid a few months later.

Picture copyright: Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

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