Pedro Almodóvar

[domino harvey]

Trailer for Madres paralelas

[domino harvey]

Holy wow does this have a great poster

[therewillbeblus]

Parallel Mothers is just the kind of suspense-lite melodrama Almodóvar can make on autopilot, but instead of getting comfortable the director instead flexes his interests far and wide, altering between micro and macro concerns, and scanning his own artistic canon, to bridge diverse strands of content under one unified tent of warmth. This film in many ways feels like an Almodóvarian Greatest Hits, borrowing the kind of lightweight humor from his earlier works around the late-80s/early-90s, the more mature philosophical musings of his best dramas, and the fluidity of acceptance through unconditional social validation. That latter exposition destroys the reality of resentment from our familiar world, and sobers us to realize how elastic our abilities are to remove the chips on our shoulders, if we only appreciate another's emotions as equal in value to our own. The macro-shift to the injustices of Spanish history might seem like a left-field stretch of messy, loose narrative on paper, but because Almodóvar can execute a swirling narrative like no other, he connects this development to the current micro themes of honesty, value of biological family, interpersonal history, and respect for oneself and others.

This is another great film about connection, validating the continually-changing nature of our egos, emotions, and defensive drives, but cementing all of these dynamic shifts into a factual history, clarifying with a final quote that objective truth matters. For Almodóvar, on a level of character, that seems to incorporate all of their segregated subjective perspectives as worthy of empathy, but also as the individual parts that formulate a whole composite of truth. On the level of history, this is far less ambiguous, and the director's passionate dedication to the source of so much emotional pain for his people, a source that is enigmatic but can be resurrected into tangible form, is strikingly powerful. He knows there are few things we can control to provide us with a sense of catharsis for the mysteries of the past, and there are no excuses for depriving us of those few precious opportunities. These are the kinds of greater concerns that have always, and will continue to band people together, help us resign our petty arguments, and integrate around common emotions that count more than those that drive us apart. It's also no coincidence that two polarized narratives in modern birth and century-old death are harmonizing within the same picture around living, breathing humans who can act, feel and collaborate in the here and now. In both narratives, hiding secrets and having secrets hidden from us ignite a diseased effect on the heart and soul, though instead of resting in shame or resentment, Almodóvar moves both narratives into compromised-but-achievable catharses that envision possibility of hope.

Almodóvar believes in human development, and disbelieves that our emotions and behavioral patterns are fixed (if he did, he certainly would not have imbued the sincere compassion he does to earn his perverse celebration of a Stockholm syndrome survivor genuinely falling in love with her captor in an earlier work!) However, he absolutely reinforces their right to exist, be they behaviors of repression, lies of omission, physical intimacy, rejection, risky exposure, fighting, or resolving conflict; or emotions of anger, happiness, frustration, fear, sadness, guilt, or tenderness. Almodóvar also seems to trust mankind to have the capacity to work through all of those behaviors and emotions to arrive at those final ones: resolving conflict through tenderness.

[domino harvey]

Almodovar’s first English-language feature, A Manual for Cleaning Women, will star Cate Blanchett— let’s hope it’s better than his English-language short

[Detective Arkadin]

Penélope Cruz was great, but I'm really looking forward to seeing more of Milena Smit. She imbues Ana with a form of youthful callowness which ultimately gives way to a maturity that can only be the product of unspeakable trauma. Extraordinary performance.

[Matt]

Outside of I’m So Excited (which I’ve failed/neglected/refused to see), I think this is Almodovar’s weakest film since Kika. Apparently, it was something unfinished from 20+ years ago that he dusted off during COVID lockdown. It feels like a COVID-compromised production (small cast, set-bound shoot) and, as twbb mentioned above, an overall sense of it being Almodovar’s Greatest Hits (but not in a positive way for me). Marvelous performances, as expected, but a very uncharacteristically uneven screenplay. My battery is running out, so I’ll try to remember to be more articulate about this tomorrow.

[feihong]

Outside of I’m So Excited (which I’ve failed/neglected/refused to see), I think this is Almodovar’s weakest film since Kika. Apparently, it was something unfinished from 20+ years ago that he dusted off during COVID lockdown. It feels like a COVID-compromised production (small cast, set-bound shoot) and, as twbb mentioned above, an overall sense of it being Almodovar’s Greatest Hits (but not in a positive way for me). Marvelous performances, as expected, but a very uncharacteristically uneven screenplay. My battery is running out, so I’ll try to remember to be more articulate about this tomorrow.

I guess I've seen most of his early films, and I've been more selective about the later ones, starting from about The Flower of My Secret on, but I was disappointed by this movie, too. I liked where it was going, but when the film pivoted completely in the last 30 minutes to not just loop back on the mass grave story, but to become primarily about the mass grave story, I felt abandoned, and maybe a little foolish for having liked the romantic melodrama of the previous 90 minutes and for wanting to see not just how it resolved, but what went down to lead to a resolution. Point of the movie or not, the mass grave pivot wrenched me out of what I was seeing, and didn't give me something equally engrossing to sink my teeth into. Until that point I was along for the ride. I suppose, though, much as I admired the idea that the argument over the mass grave led to Cruz's revelation to Ana, that maybe the moment of revelation isn't really up to the task? I guess I didn't really find it convincing that Cruz would, at that point, torpedo her life as it was––like I didn't feel she had been believably pushed to that point. And then abandoning the suspenseful linear plot of the film for a kind of visual/performance art piece ending didn't really work. So it was one for the disappointment column, for me.

[tenia]

I wasn't as disappointed by this shift but it definitely felt like too big and sudden of a shift. It reminded me of how I felt when To The Wonder changes its center of gravity about midway through and I was like "hey, give me back those characters, they were more interesting !".
Still, Madres paralelas felt quite interesting in many small brushes of its main characters, despite what seemed to me like easy screenwriting tricks at times (especially how the underlying revelations were obviously only going to happen when it's most practical from a movie's perspective). The cast most likely has a lot to do with how it still went as a very nice viewing for me.

[Matt]

There was an under-explored theme of how women kept (and keep) families going while men (through war or state violence or mere fecklessness) are absent, but that’s been a theme of multiple Almodovar films already, and there is definitely no fresh take on it here. The scenes of the mass grave (particularly the shot of the women marching and holding photographs of their missing relatives) could have come straight out of Volver, which opens with women dutifully cleaning gravestones, or The Flower of My Secret, which deals with “life after men.”

I’m sure there’s a lot here that is reflective of recent Spanish politics and the reckoning with the fascist past that is lost on me, your average ill-informed American, and that is probably quite daring to address in a partially state-funded film. But the central idea of the film’s plot is very promising yet feels disconnected from the political commentary. Perhaps if Janis (Penélope Cruz’s character) had NOT revealed what she discovered, there might have been more resonance there with themes of deception and honor and memory and single parenthood? Perhaps if Janis had suddenly died and Ana had to raise Cecilia without ever knowing the truth?

I guess it’s just a little disappointing to feel that Almodovar is spinning his wheels and making “Almodovar movies” when, with a little twist of imagination, he could have really upended expectations like he did with Talk to Her or The Skin I Live In.

[Matt]

Also, the cinematography looks unnecessarily smeary to me. Alcaine and Almodovar have shot all of their recent films digitally, but here they tried to push for both low light and keeping everything in focus. And close-ups are so close and the lighting of them so different from that of the backgrounds that they look like green screen work (and maybe are, since there are effects houses credited?)

Pain and Glory looked fantastic, cinematographically, so I’m not sure why they changed things here. Production design and set decoration are impeccable as always. Where do they get these gorgeous kitchen and bathroom tiles?

[senseabove]

I actually found this to be quite elegant—but only on the second go-round. I enjoyed it as an "Almodovar movie" with an odd dash of historical bitters on first go, and like most was a little perplexed by the seemingly ham-handed incongruity of the bookend plot; on second view, the incongruity felt very intentional, an extrapolation from how individuals suppress or reckon with incongruous, difficult facts, about themselves, their families, their histories up to societies, nations, and legacies, juxtaposing Janis' grappling with her own personal evils and her urge to literally unearth a willfully ignored past. Which, of course, isn't to say it's an apologia for delayed reckoning, but its use of time and distance, how the delayed revelations—from the major, like Ana's past and her family history, to the minor, like a rattle or a glass eye—can both complicate and entrench seemingly apparent delineations of "right" and "wrong." I keep honing in on how, when one of the women in the village says the victim had a glass eye, Arturo asks if he had any other identifying characteristics, like a wedding ring. How many glass eyes could there be in that grave? Is it remotely likely that it wandered off in the intervening decades? So much of it is about what we do with Facts, and how difficult they can be to process even when indisputable: the baby is not yours, your grandfather was murdered in cold blood, your nation's history is bloody and tragic. And yet it seems obvious how important it is, today, to hone the urge to gather more facts, things that we can point to and say: it is a fact, and it may be ugly, and it may not fit, but we need to have them, so when someone (including ourselves!) says up is down, we have more reference points for orienting ourself. (It's an earnest stretch, but from this vantage point, I kind of liked the truly bizarre green screen effect for that reason: what can we determine of this scene is "real" despite its uncanny feel of being manufactured? A kind of visual manifestation of the melodramatic method.) I don't know that, in the end, I would say it's top-tier Almodovar,—it lacks a finesse that he has at his best, and that could still incorporate incongruity as a structuring feature—but I do think it's an interesting, risky attempt to push his own boundaries.

[Finch]

Wish I had seen this thread before blind buying the Parallel Mothers BD at $23 on Amazon. I loved Pain and Glory (as well as Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, All About My Mother, Talk To Her, Bad Education) but was also disappointed by some of his films (Broken Embraces). Hoping I like this latest a lot more than some of you do!

[Finch]

The shift to the mass graves did not bother me because it was set up right in the beginning but I would agree that it could have been integrated more smoothly. Matt is onto something with his suggestion that Janis suppressing the truth from Ana likely could have provided more resonance, especially with the historical angle. My main issue with the film is that once the first twist unfolded, I correctly guessed that

SpoilerShow

Ana would be Cecilia's actual mother and that there'd been a swap at birth.

The writing (and to some extent, the cinematography) is rough compared to his best films but I still liked this a lot more than Broken Embraces or Dark Habits, or, yes, Kika, and would rank this somewhere in the middle of his filmography.

[diamonds]

Almodóvar set to begin shooting a ~30-minute short western, Extraña forma de vida.

[domino harvey]

While browsing for a date night spot, I discovered this Michelin-approved restaurant groups its dinner menu items in categories based on Almodovar films

[swo17]

No potato skins I live in? Cowards

[hearthesilence]

I'd be down with Labyrinth of Passion Fruit if such a thing existed.

[spectre]

One serving of Pepi Luci Bombe Alaska for me, thanks!

[DarkImbecile]

Almodóvar aims to shoot “Strange Way of Life”, a 30-minute Western romance with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, later this summer

[therewillbeblus]

The last time I got excited about an Almodóvar collab with an English speaking actor I fancy for a short film, it didn’t turn out so well, but that sounds pretty cool

[DarkImbecile]

Almodovar’s first English-language feature, A Manual for Cleaning Women, will star Cate Blanchett— let’s hope it’s better than his English-language short

Almodóvar has left this project over his own concerns about his readiness to shoot a feature in English

[therewillbeblus]

Here's hoping that's not an indication that the Hawke/Pascal short turned out poorly..

[beamish14]

Almodovar’s first English-language feature, A Manual for Cleaning Women, will star Cate Blanchett— let’s hope it’s better than his English-language short

Almodóvar has left this project over his own concerns about his readiness to shoot a feature in English

Not being proficient in English at the time didn’t stop Jean-Pierre Jeunet from making Alien Resurrection, and we all know everything went fine with that

It would be interesting to look at features shot primarily in languages that their respective filmmakers are not fluent in, e.g. Letters from Iwo Jima and Mishima. Paul Verhoeven took a very intensive French regiment prior to making Elle

[domino harvey]

Lilja 4-Ever (Alexandra Dahlstrom from Fucking Amal worked as Moodysson’s translator on-set since she was fluent in both Russian and Swedish)

[Never Cursed]

Sean Baker with Take Out, though obviously his co-director helped him there. Gaspar Noé didn't know English or Japanese when filming Enter The Void, I don't think.

In a related vein, Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre acted in English-language films without knowing the language, and Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon didn't speak the same language as most of their coworkers on The Leopard