Almodovar has never been one to pull punches in his critiques of his culture’s failings, but never has he so explicitly explored the connection of the personal and political, and the destructive force of denial, as in Parallel Mothers. The film follows Janis (Penelope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), who are roommates in a hospital where they give birth on the same day. The brief intersection of their lives has lasting repercussions as they part and meet again under very different circumstances. Janis’s pregnancy is the result of her relationship with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), an archeologist working with a government program to uncover mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and help the families to reinter their dead relatives. Janis persuades him to look into the grave near her hometown, where men, including her own grandfather, were shot and buried by Franco’s forces.
This dual narrative, the relationship between two mothers and the slow process of uncovering the grave, develops into a dialogue about personal and public repression and the need to open wounds to allow them to heal.
Almodovar understands and seeks to explore the interconnected nature of the past and present, and the dangers of burying the past for the sake of comfort. The Spanish Civil War itself leads to the meeting between Ana and Janis and the intersection of their lives. Janis’s own discovery of an unwanted secret in turn compels her to bury it, to pretend to only look towards the future—an act which she criticizes when Ana dismisses her interest in the mass grave.
In Parallel Mothers, the danger is avoiding dealing with truth, however traumatic—despite her knowledge, Janis resists telling Ana the truth because of the pain it would cause her. It is the catharsis of truth, as painful as it can be, that eventually allows both mothers to grieve and to eventually heal.
In background of this runs the theme of motherhood and class—Ana’s own mother abandons her daughter in favor of her career but admits that she simply did not know how to be a mother. Both Ana and Janis have nannies for their children, but for very different reasons—Ana because she’s wealthy, Janis because she’s a single mother who needs help to continue to work. The film treats the sheer complexity of motherhood, responsibility, and personal desires without judgement—Ana is not a bad mother, Janis is not a wholly good one. They are both attempting to navigate a world they’re not wholly prepared for, with responsibilities they embrace and that terrify them. It is through their shared experiences that they achieve catharsis and ultimately rebuild a family.
The pain of revealing the secret and the pain of opening the grave run side by side. The subtext of this is that it is not pleasant to recall the suffering of the men who died, who were taken from their homes and shot, holding rings and rattles and the memories of their wives and children at home, but it is necessary. Memory is necessary, not for the rehearsal of pain but for the alleviating of it. The opening of the grave, like the Janis’s revelation of the secret, is traumatic. But it is also cathartic. It is facing the past so that the dead can be acknowledged, memorialized, and reburied next to their loved ones. It is the understanding of the past that allows the future to proceed.
Parallel Mothers is perhaps Almodovar’s most quintessentially Spanish film since Matador, explicitly engaging with the political history of Spain via the personal history of his characters. In all of his films, the personal tends to be political—gender and sexuality especially acting as rebellions against a dominant culture of machismo—but with Parallel Mothers he draws on the history of Spain itself to highlight the characters and how that history shapes them. Food, paintings, music, class distinctions, and the trappings of the home itself reflect Janis’s reaching back into the historical past, and Ana passively resisting it. Always one for a complex mis-en-scene, Almodovar here uses his entire arsenal of color palette and representational art to draw distinctions and parallels between the two characters and the two elements of Spain they represent.
Parallel Mothers is ultimately about healing trauma through catharsis, the understanding and uncovering of the past as a way to push through into the future. Women are the repositories of trauma, working through the country’s collective suffering in the act of bearing witness. The intersecting plot of Ana and Janis and their daughters is not separate from the uncovering of the mass grave, but an integral part of it. It is, remarkably, a holistic and healing process, and allows the main characters to fully embrace their pasts and look forward to their futures.
Parallel Mothers is in theaters and available to stream.
Sharon Humphries-Brooks
Very, very intriguing, Lauren, & I think you’re right Your comment that “Almodovar here uses his entire arsenal of color palette and representational art to draw distinctions and parallels between the two characters and the two elements of Spain they represent.’ nudges me to notice that as I view the film again.
What an excellent film!