{"id":9500,"date":"2022-02-17T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9500"},"modified":"2022-03-10T07:55:44","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T12:55:44","slug":"weekend-movie-pick-parallel-mothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9500","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movie Pick: Parallel Mothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Seeing Pen\u00e9lope Cruz in a movie\u2019s cast-list is enough to make me want to see the film, and that decision-rule works flawlessly in Parallel Mothers<\/em> (trailer<\/a>), her latest work for writer-director Pedro Almod\u00f3var. It\u2019s a moving tale about what\u2019s lost and what\u2019s found, about the importance of knowing who you are and where you came from (coincidentally, the theme of yesterday\u2019s post about genetic genealogy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this film, Cruz plays Janis, a professional photographer who, after a photo session with a forensic anthropologist named Arturo (Israel Elejalde) asks about the exhuming the graves of her great-grandfather and several other men murdered by the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Such excavations take place under Spain\u2019s 2007 Law of Historical Memory, but Arturo says the arrangements will take time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and Janis begin an affair that, months later, leads Janis to a hospital maternity ward. She\u2019s very happy to be pregnant and about to give birth. Not so, the frightened teenager Ana (Milena Smit), her hospital roommate. Janis gives Ana a lot of support that is not forthcoming from Ana\u2019s mother, and they promise to stay in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arturo isn\u2019t wild about the baby, and the future of his and Janis\u2019s relationship is uncertain. Janis reconnects with Ana and engages her as a nanny. Soon she\u2019s faced with a powerful moral dilemma, and both their lives are about to change profoundly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the film returns to the question of the exhumation, it can feel like someone in the projection booth switched up reels, but again, the subject is knowing where you came from, which Almod\u00f3var illustrates in two completely different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cruz and Smit are wonderful as the new mothers, and the rest of the cast does well too. Quite entertaining, especially after recent disappointments (Licorice Pizza <\/em>and Nightmare Alley<\/em>). In Spanish, with subtitles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 97%; audiences: 83%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seeing Pen\u00e9lope Cruz in a movie\u2019s cast-list is enough to make me want to see the film, and that decision-rule works flawlessly in Parallel Mothers (trailer), her latest work for writer-director Pedro Almod\u00f3var. It\u2019s a moving tale about what\u2019s lost … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Beautiful acting and a plot that brings together two different threads on the issue of understanding who you are.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,366,57,359,104],"tags":[1955,1953,1954],"class_list":["post-9500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-drama","category-movies","category-review","category-the-morgue","tag-parallel-mothers","tag-pedro-almodovar","tag-penelope-cruz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2te","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9502,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9500\/revisions\/9502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}