The Merry Month of May is upon us, but first, there's still some April business to attend. Specifically, Penélope Cruz turned fifty last weekend and celebrated a big party that included such names as husband Javier Bardem, auteur par excellence Pedro Almodóvar, former scene partner Salma Hayek, and many more. Happy belated birthday to the Spanish star!
Here, at The Film Experience, the best way to mark such occasions is surrendering to list-mania, so let's consider this Oscar winner's extensive filmography and sing her praises. Excluding TV and with honorable mentions woven into the write-ups, here are my top ten favorite performances from Penélope Cruz…
THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS (1998) Fernando Trueba
Out of all the directors she's worked with, Penélope Cruz is most associated with Pedro Almodóvar. However, he wasn't the first auteur to discover the actress or have her star in multiple movies. In a career bursting at the seams with names of some of the most important Spanish filmmakers alive, Fernando Trueba deserves recognition. Due to its Oscar win, Belle Époque is probably their most known collaboration, but Cruz was much better later in the partnership. Indeed, 1998's The Girl of Your Dreams earned her the first of three Goya awards, which should mean a great deal for an actress who's sometimes struggled to be accepted by the public in her country.
Here, Cruz plays Macarena Granada, an up-and-coming star of Spanish cinema in the 1930s, who finds herself shooting a film in Nazi Germany. Inspired by real-life coproductions between Franco's regime and the Third Reich, The Girl of Your Dreams sometimes errs on the side of frivolity, as if forgetting most of its characters are Fascists, even amid their rebellious hijinks. However, Cruz manages the tonal inconsistencies like a pro, capturing Macarena's ebullience with the same verve as she registers her dangerous circumstances. A musical interlude shines for its polyglot artifice while shooting a death scene springs forth genuine hurt once the shadow of unscripted loss overcomes the character.
Cruz and Trueba revisited the story 18 years later, showing a more mature vision of Macarena, now a Hollywood sensation returned to her fascist homeland. The Queen of Spain is less impressive than its predecessor, but its leading lady makes it all worth it. There's a moment when Macarena zones out during a take that might be among Cruz's finest work, a shot of displaced reality within the dream of cinema.
The Girl of Your Dreams isn't streaming anywhere right now. Funnily enough, The Queen of Spain is available on Starz, Hoopla, Kanopy, Freevee and Film Box+. So, if you want to experience Macarena Granada, look there.
VOLVER (2006) Pedro Almodóvar
The first time Almodóvar directed Cruz happened in 1997's Live Flesh, an anguished prologue where the actress pantomimes a traumatic birth, alone in the streets of Christmastime Madrid. Two years later, they reunited for All About My Mother, and once again, Cruz plays a pregnant body cursed to a tragic end. However, this time, her role was much more prominent. Jump to 2006, after many Hollywood misadventures ruined the actress' international reputation, and you have Volver, the first proper star vehicle of their partnership. Unlike those previous projects, the whole movie is built around Cruz, here envisioned as Spain's answer to Sophia Loren, a desperate mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter.
But even if you exorcise the curse of Two Women, there's much to appreciate about Cruz, shot like the star she was always meant to be, luminous yet earthy, hands covered in blood and spirit unbroken by life's cruelty. As Raimunda, she initially conceals the character's inner life, slowly uncovering her tender heart as crisis meets miracle. She aces her director's bizarre alchemy of tone and genre expectations, cooking up a boiling pot of feminine resilience and sensuality, absurd comic beats, with a dash of lipsync-ed musicality, melodrama expressivity laced with the grounded quality of her character's circumstance. There's also a tart sting for good measure. Best of all, she nails it with ease, never calling attention to actorly effort or virtuosity.
Volver is available for rent and purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube.
ELEGY (2008) Isabel Coixet
Penélope Cruz is an expert at playing dream girls, often idealized or formed by a man's imagination. But she's equally skilled at complicating such constructs, finding humanity beneath the surface or shattering the viewer's skewed perception of these women. Her career is full of them. Sometimes, it's one who only exists in memory, be it a lover's slippery mind or celluloid artifacts. Think Broken Embraces and the many ways it approaches the beautiful Lena. Or perhaps she's someone whose whole presence on screen is mediated by a man's desire, like in Open Your Eyes and its American remake. In the best cases, Cruz presents the ideal and then makes us question it by suggesting the person within.
In Isabel Coixet's adaptation of Roth's The Dying Animal, she's Consuela, a student who finds herself entangled with an older professor. Such phrasing seems wrong, however, for it projects too much passivity into a characterization that repudiates it in every way. For as much as her lover might instinctually reduce Consuela to her youth, her beauty, her assumed innocence, Cruz never lets herself be trapped in a box of outside conjecture. Instead, she's a fleshed-out individual, her eyes containing mystery but, above all, a piquant gaze that can just as easily slip into hunger as annoyance. In lesser hands, Consuela would be some idea floating above the film like a whisper of smoke. With Cruz on the wheel, she's a tridimensional marvel who'll beckon your love but won't diminish in its absence.
Elegy is streaming on Peacock, Tubi, Kanopy, Shout! TV, Plex, Freevee, and the Roku Channel.
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008) Woody Allen
As a beautiful Spanish actress who's endeavored past her national cinema into the English-speaking mainstream, Penélope Cruz has often been saddled with stereotypical roles. They're defined by notions of exotic fieriness, a temptress with a terrible temper whose licentiousness contrasts with less liberated entities. As Maria Elena, she's working within that tired milieu, though Allen's script provides enough leeway to circumvent the worst of it. Even at her maddest, there's a spark of keen intelligence in the woman's eye, the hint of an artist's inspiration bubbling with sincerity beneath the archetypical rage. Her Maria Elena is a megalomaniac, alright, but she's not just that.
In a sense, Vicky Cristina Barcelona finds Cruz in a paradox of excellence. On the one hand, she's playing it according to the mercuriality her presence has always entailed. It's invigorating stuff, capable of making the most perfunctory trope feel fresh, and the text zing with unpredictability. At points, you feel the danger of the diva, as if she's capable of anything. On the other hand, the performance is graceful when switching tonalities, sometimes registers, and the turn is disciplined throughout. Her physicality is especially impressive, dancer-like, oft more eloquent than the dialogue. And so, to best embody chaos made woman, Cruz is in complete control. That's why the characterization works, contradictory as it may seem.
Some of that same dynamic repeats in Nine, the Oscar follow-up that earned her a third nomination. Sadly, you won't find anything to marvel at in her other Allen collaboration. The least said about To Rome with Love, the better.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is streaming on Hoopla and Tubi. It's also available to rent and purchase on the major platforms.
MA MA (2015) Julio Medem
Julio Medem's cancer melodrama is one of those films where suffering seems to be the entire point of the exercise. It comes to a point when the character's integrity warps in the face of the textual convolutions. In the crisis, it's up to a cadre of fine Spanish actors to make the impossible work. Other leading ladies might have collapsed under the strain, but Cruz remains steadfast. Indeed, she thrives, pummeling through the material with equal parts ferociousness and gentility. Whenever the narrative threatens to unravel, there she is, ready to keep it all together, couching the most ludicrous developments in honest emotion.
The trick lies in her negotiating approach. Some scenes require her to be the force propelling the tragedy, while others only function if one tamps down on the excess and ceases to be the source of energy. Rather than acting a storm, she depicts herself overwhelmed by storming emotion. It's all in the thespian's reticence, Cruz's ability to recede and contain the blast of feeling. Crazed choices are suddenly understandable through her restraint, as if recognition blossomed within those who watch her. She does similar things in On the Fringe, reunited with Ma Ma co-star Luis Tosar. Truthfully, that piece of social realism requires less strain and doesn't depend on Cruz as much as the other feature.
Ma Ma is streaming on Peacock, Tubi, Kanopy, Plex, Revry, Popcpornflix, and Pluto TV. It's also available to enter or purchase on the major platforms.
EVERYBODY KNOWS (2018) Asghar Farhadi
Everybody knows that Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, the only Spanish actors to win Academy Awards, are married. They tied the knot in 2010 after romance blossomed around 2007, but have known each other for much longer. Indeed, they shared the screen right from the start of her career when Binas Lunas cast them both in Jamon Jamon. Shot like pure sex, the two were a match made in heaven, electrifying the screen with such carnality it's a miracle no one was zapped out of existence. While both starred in Live Flesh, they shared no scenes, and The Counselor is similar. Thankfully, there's Vicky Cristina Barcelona to capitalize on their chemistry, with Loving Pablo also fitting the bill despite being generally lackluster.
By far, their best on-screen pairing can be found in Farhadi's Everybody Knows, a curious Spanish detour for the Iranian director. Much of their work depends upon the etching of small details, building complex shared pasts out of finely judged reactions and negotiations of space. It's an exercise in naturalism that asks much from its cast, commanding them to anchor a twisted plot that could easily turn into exploitative trash. Cruz, in particular, does miracles, sketching one of her most lived-in portrayals ever, so complete and finely crafted you believe the woman's reality no matter how ludicrous her tragedy might become. If possible, her scenes shared with Ricardo Darín and Bárbara Lennie are even more impressive than what Cruz accomplishes with Bardem.
Everybody Knows is available to rent and purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube.
PARALLEL MOTHERS (2021) Pedro Almodóvar
In the aftermath of Broken Embraces, Almodóvar returned to casting Penélope Cruz as the prototypical mother figure of his cinema. Hell, she basically played the director's own mama in Pain and Glory, and even the throwaway cameo in I'm So Excited! revolves around ideas of maternity. I wrote about that and more when doing an FYC for Penélope Cruz in 2021. My love for her Parallel Mothers hasn't changed since then, and since it's a piece I'm incredibly proud of, let me redirect you to it. Here's a sample of that write-up:
"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…
…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…"
Parallel Mothers is streaming on Starz. You can also find it, available to rent and purchase, on the major platforms.
OFFICIAL COMPETITION (2021) Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn
Throughout a varied career, Penélope Cruz has often played characters of different nationalities from hers. We'll consider her Italian projects soon enough, but for now, let's think of the actress' Latin-American wanderings. Sometimes, it manifests in English-language work with a nebulous accent sprinkled on top, as in Blow, a protean performance to rival Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Maria Elena. On other occasions, we find Cruz studying the idiomatic peculiarities of national speech, adapting her Spanish to different regions of the world. Wasp Network is probably her best work in that regard. And anything less than total immersion would destroy that work, so insistent on the virtues of quotidian observations. Cruz is so formidable she becomes the film's saving grace.
In Official Competition, she wasn't as unmoored in her excellence, but Cruz still shines as the picture's greatest element. At the same Venice Film Festival where she won the Volpi Cup for Parallel Mothers, the thespian showcased she's as agile with comedy as with melodrama. Her portrayal of an eccentric movie director toying with a pair of leading men is a riot, delicious to savor in her most outlandish passages and similarly entrancing when Cruz must draw back, complicate the humorous pitch, and maybe even signal suspense. There's no greater proof of her flexibility as a performer, no better testament to the limber fierceness with which she approaches her roles. By the end, you'll be on your feet applauding.
Official Competition is streaming on Hulu, AMC, and IFC Films Unlimited. You can also rent and buy it on the major platforms.
L'IMMENSITÀ (2022) Emanuele Crialese
Beyond Spanish and English, Penélope Cruz also speaks French and Italian. That latter one has allowed her to intrude upon Italy's cinematic circles, starting with the production that led her to learn the language in the first place. For Sergio Castellitto, Cruz was Italia in Don't Move, a cipher of brutalized womanhood, simultaneously earthy and airy, a broken fantasy oozing blood. She's a whole lot. So much so that Cruz won the David di Donatello award, or, in other words, an Italian Oscar. She reunited with Castellitto for Twice Born, another bit of misery porn where, against all odds, Cruz finds the path to greatness. Whatever happens, this star will break your heart.
One can say the same about the best of her Italian exercises, an autofiction where Emanuele Crialese looks back on his childhood as a trans boy - L'immensità. Despite that confessional aspect, the film is as much a memory play on the director's maternal traumas, finding a complicated beacon of love in Penélope Cruz's Clara. Again, she's something of an ideal, a mirage invoked by a son's remembrance. But she's also a volatile element whose instability can turn the sweetest moments into a brush with danger. It's one hell of a feat to cohere the character's two essential facets while putting forward a notion that we're still not seeing all of her. While we know this woman through her child's memory, her truth extends beyond what he can grasp.
L'Immensità is streaming on Prime Video, Plex, and Xumo Play. You can also rent and purchase it on the major platforms.
FERRARI (2023) Michael Mann
Once more, let me quote myself. This time, it's the Almost There I recently wrote on Penélope Cruz' tremendous turn in Michael Mann's Ferrari. Here's a sample of that much longer write-up:
"…Ungenerous viewers might dismiss Penélope Cruz's take on Laura from this first moment as a reprise of greatest hits. The fiery woman archetype is there, and so is the fury of a jilted wife, with the firearm's blast recalling the role that got her an Oscar. However, I'd argue such conclusions are too hasty and surface-level. Sure, on paper, Laura can feel clichéd in her introduction, but Cruz doesn't play her as such. Notice the stillness as she listens to Enzo make his way inside, the nonchalant way she fishes the revolver out of a bedside drawer. She is angry, but hers is a controlled, even comfortable fury. Harsh words don't yet rise to screams.
Above all else, Laura seems defeated yet ready for a fight. She's a paradox of the warrior who's lost her most important battle and now exists in limbo. Indeed, Cruz almost acts the morning passages as someone going through the motions. In her, Mann finds the inverse of his protagonist, though they're both bound by off-screen tragedy. The director's complementing portraiture can be best appreciated when he forces the viewer to consider how each parent behaves when visiting their son's grave. Alone in the mausoleum, Driver breaks apart, talking more openly than he ever does in the rest of the film, emotion ripping through him until the camera itself seems to shy away.
This vulnerability is secret, kept behind closed doors. It looks painful, a cilice wrapped around his heart. But then, he leaves, and in comes Cruz. Unlike him, she doesn't say a single word, and Mann lingers in long takes rather than cutting to alternate angles. Contemplating the actress' face, we're made to confront a woman's brokenness, tears swimming within her look while a smile sketches itself across the face. Enzo confessed and left part of himself in that mausoleum. Laura communes with the dead as if they're still there. They go with her when she leaves, an invisible shroud that Cruz makes palpable to the viewer. If the drivers are in a kind of death cult, so is Laura, even if she's the only member…"
Ferrari is available for rent and purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, the Microsoft Store, and Spectrum On Demand.
What about you, dear reader? What are your favorite Penélope Cruz performances?