In Spain, mothers are usually depicted cooking and cleaning and are often seen as a little bit fat. “But she doesn’t come out of the Spanish tradition of motherhood. “Penélope is the perfect image I have of motherhood,” says Almodóvar. In all their movies, with the sole exception of “Broken Embraces,” Cruz is playing either a pregnant woman, as she did in “Live Flesh” and “All About My Mother,” or a matriarch, a role she essayed so voluptuously in “Volver.” When Almodóvar needed to find someone to portray his own mother in the semi-autobiographical “Pain and Glory,” he turned once again to Cruz.
What makes their association unique is that there is a thematic thread through their work.
Indeed, Cruz and Almodóvar have the type of deep and ever evolving connection between director and actor that places them in the cinematic firmament of screen partnerships, ranking alongside John Ford and John Wayne, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, and Martin Scorsese’s collaborations with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. He understands and appreciates their gifts, and that allows him to push them in startling directions.” “He’s toying with narrative in creative ways, and there’s something about Pedro when he’s working with actors like Antonio or Penélope. “Pedro has entered a new period of maturity and mastery,” says Michael Barker, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Classics, the art-house label that will distribute “Parallel Mothers” (as it has all Almodóvar’s films) when it opens domestically on Dec. Those include 2016’s “Julieta” and 2019’s “Pain and Glory,” which scored Oscar nominations for best international feature and a lead actor nod for its star, Antonio Banderas.
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After striking out with the 2013 farce “I’m So Excited,” one of the worst-reviewed films of his lengthy career, Almodóvar has made a series of pictures that are notable for their restraint and dramatic resonance. The picture extends a creative resurgence for Almodóvar. “Parallel Mothers” debuted to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival, where Cruz captured the best actress prize, and then resonated with audiences and critics again when it screened on the closing night of the New York Film Festival. At the height of the pandemic, when Cruz was locked down in Spain with her husband, Javier Bardem, and their two children, she got the kind of call from Almodóvar that she has received several times over their long friendship. It was a tale that Almodóvar first spun for Cruz while they were doing a promotional tour for 1999’s “All About My Mother,” and one that gestated for two decades.
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The film, which marks her eighth collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, is one of the most psychologically rich and surprising of their partnerships, a movie that seamlessly integrates elements of the thriller and melodrama genres with a story that is both deeply personal and intensely political. That primal instinct and protective flame would serve Cruz well when it came to putting “Parallel Mothers,” the story of two women whose children are switched at birth, on the screen. I felt something deep in myself that was like if you take the fucking doll from me, I’m going to hit you.” “When the prop department would take the doll, I went psycho. It didn’t matter that it was only a toy - she refused to surrender her child.
Something strange happened to Penélope Cruz as she rehearsed on the set of “ Parallel Mothers.” Whenever the crew would come to collect the doll she was using as a stand-in for a flesh-and-blood baby, Cruz tensed up.
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