What a nice surprise this new Almodóvar who manages to bring together a number of themes with dexterity, maintaining a remarkable linearity and narrative cleanliness, without being wrapped up by the multitude of themes and sub-themes, the latter however sometimes central but not exhibited. And where the intimate and the collective, the exterior and the interior, the daily life of the present and the great dramas of history are concentrated, united, with a master hand as if they were one. We add that the film is a history lesson of far-sighted clarity and courage in these conformist times.
Opening film of the latest edition of the Venice International Film Festival, Parallel mothers won the Coppa Volpi for the best female interpretation, which went to Penélope Cruz who plays the lead role. Fully deserved award, because this is among the most beautiful interpretations of his career, including numerous collaborations with the author of Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988).
The Spanish director outlines a new portrait of women on the verge of yet another nervous breakdown, but with a narrative and recitative register very different from the great success that has consecrated him internationally. The viewer may in fact ask why Almodóvar chooses a (relatively) calm mode, given that the theme highlighted is highly emotional: unwanted and double motherhood.
If it is true that at a certain moment Almodóvar’s filmography made a leap from the exterior of life to the interior, from joy to melancholy, from action to questioning, roughly High heels (1991), it is also true that this did not prevent the director from subsequently making films full of passion and drama, overwhelming, sometimes even masterpieces such as All about my mother (1999), where, among the many women, was Penélope Cruz. The acting here, on the other hand, is as a whole subdued, almost modest, and the direction, editing and photography have the same breath. Indeed, the more one advances in the narrative and the more everything becomes muffled, the penumbra grows in the sequences shot in the interiors. And you think as a tone Talk to her (2002), subsequent title to All about my mother. So why this choice?
Because in this intergenerational film (above all) of women we deal with such serious issues of collective memory and at the same time such great pains of the intimate that making them explicit, perhaps even just the thought of doing so, in turn brings pain, increases it. But also because we speak of what (us) is suitable or not in certain situations of life, of the moral question that arises in making certain choices or not. And if the film is intergenerational it is also because the situations, the roles, are largely interchangeable. Since the cradle, and we don’t write it by accident. Cowardice or simple mistake are lurking for everyone, without exception, in this long apnea film.
If the late motherhood, but in the desired fund, of Penélope Cruz, and the precocious and unwanted one of the 25-year-old Milena Smit (changing but gradually building her dignity as a violated woman) are in reality parallel and synchronic, it is also true that they are l ‘one the reverse of the other. And they are welded to a fundamental theme that opens and closes the film: the still too many disappeared from the Spanish civil war where are they? In which pits were they thrown by the Phalangists? How to recover their remains? The importance of the historical question is also suggested – once again Almodóvar avoids the excess of underlining – by the fact that the film is set in 2018 as evidenced by the medical tests framed countless times: that is, exactly forty years from the approval by way of referendum of the democratic constitution.
A film that speaks to everyone
Penélope Cruz’s character is pervaded from the outset by this travail on a historical truth that she would like to be consciously accepted by all, an almost synchronic even if subdued travail compared to the painful, screamed labor of childbirth, which already bursts into the first sequences of the film. The only violent moment of Parallel mothers, or rather the only explicitly violent moment, is when life breaks. In the present. But when we speak instead of death and violence, single or collective, or of cowardice and shortcomings of the past, or even of the silence of convenience or the latent desire not to be informed, of the absence of a greater sense of duty in studying historical events and becoming aware of the pain of others procured in a barbaric way, then everything takes on a wider and higher meaning. Without shouting, without ranting. But with a clear intergenerational awareness because the faults are largely distributed. But not those policies of fascism and class, where Almodovar is instead clear in drawing the boundary of responsibility. And in fact, those who have them, both family and political, are off-screen in the film, perhaps in Granada, like the father of the young mother.
Speaking of Spain of yesterday and today from the intimate forum, the filmmaker also makes an important transnational film since speaking admirably to all Spaniards he speaks to everyone: it is an invitation to the French to resolve the issues related to collaborationism with Nazi Germany, but even those of colonialism, both external and internal; to the Portuguese to deal with what remains in their country of the Salazar regime; and so on up to obviously and, indeed, more than ever, to us Italians. While discussing whether to dissolve far-right formations, it cannot be forgotten that since the old political system born after World War II was dissolved and Silvio Berlusconi went into politics by clearing customs the former fascists, or presumed such, a obsession with the dictatorship that never existed (communism) and a relativistic indulgence towards the dictatorship that really existed (fascism), a frightening chaos of values has been generated. Almodóvar’s film cuts sharply on this, it is the only exchange not allowed. And even in the difference of historical contexts, the affinities are not lacking.
In other words, the film questions us, discreetly but clearly, so that the repressed can be faced and resolved. Because the great pains are subdued or withheld only in appearance.
Almodóvar’s ability to generate from the precise photograph of the love and relational chaos of the contemporary world is extraordinary an equally precise global photograph of the chaos of democratic and humanistic values on which the post-World War II democracies arose. Virtually every situation in the film can be read as a metaphor for the themes and sub-themes that pervade it and which we have tried to highlight with the fewest possible references to the plot. But even when it’s explicit it creates echoes. The spectrum is broad.
As good as the dubbing is, we invite you to see and hear how Almodóvar directed his actresses and actors with all their nuances in the original language version. Parallel mothers it also deserves it because it is a response to the gentrification of certain auteur cinema which tends to speak more and more of the intimate, leaving out the collective in a by now serious historical moment. Pedro Almodóvar’s film, like the extraordinary France by Bruno Dumont (who from this week should increase the number of theaters in the area that offer it in the original version), succeeds in the incredible exploit of speaking magnificently about the intimate dimension but also using it for a deep and alarmed reflection on contemporary society. In both cases with great humanity because in search of humanity.
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