by Nathaniel R
Given the elegaic tone of Pedro Almodóvar's brilliant autobiographical Pain & Glory (2019) we worried that it might be his last film. We're so pleased to be feeling paranoid about that now. The 70 year-old master is already writing again or perhaps has finished writing something new. And not just one new project, but three! His next feature (which will shoot in early 2021) is a melodrama called Parallel Mothers, which will star his muse Penélope Cruz. The film will follow the lives of two mothers who give birth on the same day but whose lives take different courses (no word yet on who will play the other mother or if this is a dual role for Cruz). This will be the director and actress's seventh collaboration...
Pedro & Penélope, the early yearsShe previously had supporting roles in Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), I'm So Excited (2013) and Pain & Glory (2019) and headlined Volver (2006) and Broken Embraces (2009). This will not quite put her at the tippity-top of Almodovar's muses as Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas both made 8 pictures with the director (and both had more leading roles, too), but she's getting there!
There has always been a lot of hysterical talk -- which one might argue implies a very skewered Ameri-centric view of the world -- around when Almodóvar will make his first English-language feature. We frankly don't know why people keep eagerly awaiting that since his Spanish language features are so perfect! But, at any rate, English language stars will line up if and when it happens. A short film with Tilda Swinton called The Human Voice is going before the cameras this summer and after Parallel Mothers there will be a feature based on Lucia Berlin's short stories A Manual For Cleaning Women. Cate Blanchett reportedly wants the lead for the latter, but then again ... who wouldn't?
Still we shouldn't assume that the latter project will happen at all or in that form until it actually happens. Almodóvar has dangled the English language carrot for as long as we can remember following his career; recently Julieta (2016) was going to be the film that crossed that line but in the end it stayed in Spain. Though Almodóvar usually writes originals A Manual For Cleaning Women will not be his first adaptation. Live Flesh (1997), The Skin I Live In (2011) and Julieta (2016) were also based on books or short stories.