Since they started working together, Penélope Cruz has always been a mother figure in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema. He calls her the epitome of Spanish motherhood, resilient and sensual. It's an archetype she has represented, in some way, in all their collaborations – from 1997's Live Flesh to this year's Parallel Mothers. Indeed, their latest partnership feels like a culmination, the maximum manifestation of the auteur's ideas on motherhood. It's also the most complicated role he's ever given his current muse, an extreme of melodrama paralleled by political reflections. The actress is asked to go to extremes of emotion while also holding back. She must be outwardly demonstrative, crystalline clear, naked in sentiment and expression. However, the part also demands internalization, reticence, secrets that burn. All in all, it's a monumental challenge…
Janis Moreno is a photographer. We meet her at work, movie camera looking into another lens. The black hole of the objective may consume the screen, but it's her eyes that pull our attention. Her gaze is irresistible, an artist's loving eyes considering her model, muse, and future lover. Arturo is the man posing, a forensic archeologist who she asks for a favor. Like Cruz herself, Janis lost her great-grandfather to Franco's regime. At the onset of Civil War, men from her village were rounded up and shot, their bodies buried, hidden, condemned to be forgotten. Yet, nobody forgot, and the generational trauma passed from person to person. History refuses to remain silent, to be a secret untold.
The script doesn't wait for the audience to mull over these ideas before it jumps. From one cut to another, they go from friends to lovers. From the adulterous bed, we go to the maternity ward, where Janis waits to give birth. Most of the pregnancy happens off-screen, but Cruz conveys the woman's exhaustion, how tiring it is when the body has become a vessel for new life. The physical discomfort of fecundity, of labor, reverberates through her and the screen alike. But, along with the pain, there's also the love and the glow of tenderness. If only Janis' roommate in the hospital felt as joyful. Ana is a teenager whose pregnancy is both unplanned and unwanted. A lost girl, she yearns for comfort that Janis promptly provides.
Cruz emanates immense warmth in these scenes, assuring her younger companion that there is happiness down the road, that everything will be alright. Almodóvar's eternal mother illustrates the bonds forged between people in the same predicament, the sisterhood of maternal parallelism. That's not to say she's an idealized figure. A visit from Ana's narcissistic actress mother gives Cruz plenty of opportunity to hint at Janis' sharper edges. Her comedic timing is everything, singing a symphony of bemused incredulity out of polite reactions. She delineates other tonal undercurrents, too, like the fear of a mother momentarily separated from her newborn daughter, longing for the baby's touch, even as she tries to reassure Ana.
Back at home with her baby, Cruz gets to play these sub-textual notes as the main text of her performance. The humor becomes blatant as Janis's dislike for her Irish au pair grows from mild annoyance to full-on hatred. Nervousness also takes center stage when her baby's father visits, prompting a flashback reflecting Janis's present frustrations. Memories ring with determination and the pain of letting go. Cruz doesn't allow us to ignore how accepting her lover's uninterest in parenthood hurts. On the verge of tears, she prefers to abnegate altogether rather than have him be a resentful presence. Fixing his camera on Cruz, Almodóvar lets her denote the echoes of past pains through these current interactions, how the man's strange coldness rankles.
Here on out, it becomes difficult to discuss the brilliance of Cruz's work without falling into spoilers. What's more, Parallel Mothers is a movie that should be experienced with little information, letting its preposterous twists shock you just as they do poor Janis. Around the half-hour mark, Almodóvar's melodramatic plot goes into high gear, and his leading lady is tasked with negotiating complicated choices, grounding them. The biggest compliment to Cruz's performance is that she takes these wild swings and somehow finds a way to make them appear natural. When the seed of doubt is planted, the actress shows us how it grows and takes root, consuming a woman that's afraid of the truth while still needing it.
How does one play these terrifying situations? Through swallowed-down grief that she can't openly express, the tremor of a tear that's struggling not to fall? Then, there's the regret over unshared knowledge, over deceit. What's unsaid becomes a burden so great it seems to press down on her chest, suffocating the character. For Cruz, performing Janis becomes a study of maternal guilt that metastasizes into a tumescent chimera, devouring Janis from the inside out. Keeping everything to herself, the photographer desperately tries to avoid causing pain and chaos. And yet, this avoidance of drama is what, in the end, causes discord and heartbreak, what causes melodrama. Cruz breathes life into these conundrums, making them evident but mysterious enough to be human.
Most of all, she embodies her director's ideas, the parallelism between maternal pain and a country's relationship with its history. The past must be confronted if you hope to have a future. It's as inevitable as an ancient tragedy.
Part of Cruz's greatness is thus a product of directorial discipline. Before shooting started, Almodóvar rehearsed extensively with his parallel mothers, working on holding back emotion. According to him, there was much crying on set, and he worked against it, achieving a more character-specific response from his thespians. He sometimes edited around it, too, choosing takes where the sentimentality was dialed down, less conspicuous. It's a delicate equilibrium that results in both a magnificent film and an equally brilliant performance by Penélope Cruz. What's more, as a writer, Almodóvar is economical regarding justifications and exposition. We're led to understand Janis through Cruz's reactions and little else. It takes incredible trust to make such a dynamic work, the combination of a cinematic master and a superb performer.
This approach pays off when revelations are made, at long last, and Cruz gets to fall apart on-screen after hinting at it for more than an hour. First, there's anger at what happened to Ana and her family's apolitical ignorance. It's the most furious Janis ever is, the most political an Almodóvar film has been for decades. Later, after the photographer makes her own revelations, there's horror and unsurmountable sorrow. A wave crashes down on her, the dyke of secrets having ruptured with the blast of a truth bomb. It's a veritable tsunami of regret manifesting in tears, convulsive cries, vomiting. All at once, everything Janis has been keeping down comes forth spectacularly, and it's a miracle that Cruz makes it work. Then again, if there's one thing Parallel Mothers proves is that Cruz is a miracle worker.
Surprisingly enough, after all these acting pyrotechnics, it's through a quiet monologue that the actress tears down the last of our defenses. Janis talks of love, pride, and dignity in the face of fascism. Her words resurrect the dead with Cruz's delivery invoking ghosts. The line readings transcend mortality and history's distance, a gut-punch of haunted recollection. Just as her face once lit up - when falling in love and lust, when regarding her on-screen daughter - there's now a shadow darkening the beauty. This is the kind of achievement that should win awards and earn applause. Cruz has never been better, and all I can do is hope that AMPAS recognizes that. An Oscar would look nice next to her Volpi Cup and LAFCA Best Actress prize.
Paralell Mothers is now in selected theaters. It's one of the best movies of the year!