The history of birth has a shared pain to it…

In theatres now from auteur Pedro Almodóvar;   Parallel Mothers is yet another interesting entry into his canon of stories that is fascinated with the complexities of motherhood and our ties to the collective history of the world around us.

Two women, Janis and Ana (Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit), coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.

While Parallel Mothers does go into some uneven waters tonally as it tries to tie in the recent pain of Spain’s complicated past into the narrative it overcomes thanks to a hell of a performance from its leading lady.

As a storyteller, Almodóvar has never been afraid to pull nationalistic issues from his home country into his stories but it comes off in a fairly awkward and kind of shoehorned fashion as a side story in this otherwise engaging story of motherhood and family.

The narrative collision of these two women is really at the heart of this story because we really get to see the spectrum of emotions that are involved with motherhood and the conflicts that come within it all and Almodóvar has always been at his best when he lets his actors do the work inside the frame that he is setting up.  It’s hardly his flashiest film but it’s one that is incredibly self-assured from top to bottom as he places his characters in this environment which is both stable yet volatile because of what is about to happen.

His two primary characters are truly emotional juxtapositions of one another and he directs them both with such subtlety that when they ultimately switch roles, it’s heartbreaking as both actresses bring their absolute best to the table.

It’s no wonder that Penelope Cruz is nominated for an Oscar with her performance here because as Janis we see a woman who was at peace with the reality that she might not have children until she actually did and knew that she would now lay down in traffic for this young soul that she never expected to even meet.  She had motherhood thrust upon her and never wants to let it go, while Milena Smit on the other end of the spectrum is lost in her role as motherhood until a betrayal and the crux of narrative turns and puts her into action.

Almodóvar allows audiences to see what it means for these women to be mothers and it doesn’t romanticize it but lets us see both the pleasure and the pain that comes with the job.  Both actresses do some stellar work as they explore the idea of what motherhood is, especially in relationship to their own womanhood.

While the duel narrative of nationalistic pain muddying the waters a little bit, it doesn’t distract too much as Parallel Mothers gives us its story of fearless women faced with decisions they never thought they’d have to make which will ultimately define who are they are.