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Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s Il Quarto Stato, 1901
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Writer/director/producer Pedro Almodóvar
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Almodóvar with Penélope Cruz
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| Almodóvar with Milena Smit and Penélope Cruz |
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| Valley of the Fallen |
PARALLEL MOTHERS (Madres paralelas) B Spain France (123 mi) 2021
d: Pedro Almodóvar
No history is
mute. However much they burn it, however
much they smash it, however much they lie about it, human history refuses to
shut its mouth. —
innertitle seen at the end of the film from Uruguayan essayist, journalist,
historian, and social activist Eduardo Galeano’s collection of essays, Patas Arriba: Escuela del Mundo al Revés
(Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World), 1998
Almodóvar has avoided references to Franco throughout his
career, making films that are mostly non-political, though he emerged as part
of La Movida
Madrileña, an underground, counterculture artistic movement taking place in
Madrid after the death of Franco in 1975, mixing alternative theater, punk
rock, and porn ("'Bless
the chaos': La Movida Madrileña, Spain's seedy, wild post-Franco
underground") in an attempt to break free of the Franco-imposed state of exception, a fascist state aligned with the
Catholic Church that brutally restricted civil liberties and freedom of
expression. In his 1997 film LIVE FLESH,
the first to feature a young Penélope Cruz (appearing onscreen for all of
8-minutes), she plays a young mother giving birth at Christmas on a bus in the
middle of the night in Madrid, set during the Franco-era state of emergency of
1970, as she goes into labor (giving birth to the film’s protagonist), graffiti
on the wall can be seen that reads “Libertad, Abajo el estado de
escepción!/Liberty, down with the state of exception!” Almodóvar’s early work particularly emphasized
social and sexual freedoms, taking satiric shots at the Catholic Church,
basically violating every known taboo, largely viewed as a response to break
free of the Franco-era of repression.
While Almodóvar is the most famous filmmaker of La Movida, blending
fast-paced comedic farce into classic melodrama mixed with film noir, his films
amplified the exhilaration of the transition to democracy that followed
Franco’s death, though they largely tend to be viewed as apolitical. Not so here, as this is an intentional
reminder of history, the film that most directly addresses the topic of
historical memory, taking on the horrifying legacy of Franco’s Spain, a fascist
dictatorship that officially lasted from 1939 until 1975, responsible for those
“disappeared” citizens who were forcibly abducted, tortured, and murdered by
paramilitary forces, subject to mass burial in unmarked graves of anywhere up
to 150,000 civilians. As many as a
million more passed through concentration camps built during the 40’s, with many
dying of malnutrition and starvation.
Another half-million fled Spain as political refugees. Over the next four decades of Franco’s rule,
thousands were arrested, tortured or murdered by the secret police, while strikes,
political parties, and trade unions were banned, and democratic rights
suppressed. The aftermath of Franco’s
death was followed by a pacto del olvido,
or pact of forgetting, a 1977 Amnesty Law that secured the release of all
political prisoners, yet the political parties decided that the best way of
transitioning past the dictatorship into a democracy was to “forget” about recent atrocities,
allowing time for memories and eyewitnesses to die, as there would be no
prosecutions for war crimes or human rights violations, an unwritten agreement
that stayed in place until the first mass grave was dug up in 2000. While it’s impossible to know exactly, as
many of these mass graves no longer exist because they have been dug up without
anyone knowing or because freeways, industrial parks, and new neighborhoods
have been built over them, yet reportedly 90,000 missing Spaniards were shot
during the 1936-39 civil war and dumped in unidentified mass graves, with
another 40,000 in the postwar period, including the remains of Spanish poet and
playwright Federico García Lorca, which have yet to be found, with only 19,000
bodies currently recovered. In 2007,
thirty years after democratic rule was established, Spain passed the Historical
Memory Law, The
Historical Memory Law (Law 52/2007 of December 26th), which not only
condemns Franco's actions during the civil war but provides a legal framework
to exhume buried bodies, using scientific DNA methods to trace and identify
victims buried in mass graves, while also requiring statues, plaques, and other
symbols of the dictatorship to be removed from public places. Almodóvar was an executive producer on THE
SILENCE OF OTHERS (2018), a documentary film that examines the 6-year struggle
to discover the missing victims, which may have been the stimulus for making
this film. The main criticism is the
structural nature, as the central story about the two women actually dominates
the film, while the historical perspective, which carries much greater weight,
is only added tangentially. For
instance, while Almodóvar intersperses his film with painful reminders of
Spain’s civil war, it’s not the centerpiece, as it is in the César Díaz film
about the still-existing open wounds from the 36-year Guatemalan civil war, 2019
Top Ten List #8 Our Mothers (Nuestras madres), which documents the
painstakingly slow task of excavating dead bodies littered around the country
in unmarked graves. In a book of
interviews published in 2006, Almodóvar said, “Twenty years ago, my revenge
against Franco was to not even recognize his existence, his memory; to make my
films as if he had never existed. Today
I think it fitting that we don’t forget that period, and remember that it
wasn’t so long ago.”
Essentially the story of two pregnant mothers, Janis
(Penélope Cruz), a photojournalist and commercial photographer approaching 40,
and Ana (newcomer Milena Smit), a single teen living with her mother, meeting
at the hospital and striking up a friendship surrounding their perfectly
healthy newborn daughters. With dizzying
economy, Almodóvar establishes the premise of his film in just a few minutes,
including an initial photo session with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a renowned
forensic archaeologist, asking for his help in excavating a mass grave in her
home village, a place where her great-grandfather, who was also a photographer,
is presumably buried, along with several of his compatriots that he
photographed before they fell at the hands of Franco’s soldiers, all victims of
the Spanish civil war, as she wants them to be buried with their family
respectfully, a project that takes time to get funding approval, followed by
dinner over a bottle of wine, white curtains billowing in the breeze, a sign of
sexual activity happening inside, then jumping ahead to the hospital room. Both pregnancies are unplanned, with Janis
delighted, something she’s always wanted, while the more vulnerable Ana is less
enthused, showing signs of regret, yet it’s the starting point of a developing
friendship, as women typically take center stage in Almodóvar’s films. While the title is deceiving, as they don’t
actually live parallel lives, they actually intersect at one point, nearly
indistinguishable, becoming one and the same, calling into question just what
the director had in mind, though it may also refer to the two separate plot
lines in the film. While the director
spends considerable time developing the different lives of each mother, they
remain close, sharing baby pictures, and looking out for one another. When Arturo comes to visit the baby, right
off the bat he feels no connection, going so far as to think the baby is not
his, but she refuses to do a paternity test, which just happens to mirror the
scientific methods used by Arturo in his excavation projects, and serves as the
bridge between the two plots. This
throws Janis for a loop, already raising the child alone, as Arturo is a
married man, leaving her feeling more disconnected from him. Ana’s mother, Teresa (Mother Teresa, get
it?), played by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, is anything but a saint, in fact she’s an
actress, a diva in every respect, as her life continually swirls around
herself, where her career is all that matters, cast as the lead in a Lorca
drama, going on a theatrical tour, leaving her daughter behind to raise her own
child by herself, abandoning her when she needs her the most. Accordingly, a mystifyingly unfortunate
tragedy occurs, leaving no rational explanation, no foul play – it simply
happens. Melodramas are born out of
someone’s misfortune. The entire film,
however, reverberates around that confounding and inexplicable event, weaving
layer upon layer of aftereffects that continually haunt each of the characters,
reminding viewers that life, as well as history, continually throws us a curve,
filled with buried secrets and repressed family dramas, with the director
allowing these characters to take some solace and relief in each other, perhaps
helping in the healing process. This
being an Almodóvar film, that healing takes different forms than might be
expected, bringing the two women into closer proximity, with Ana actually
moving into her home, allowing Janis to return to work, where one of the more
tender scenes is Janis teaching Ana how to peel potatoes for a potato omelet in
the sanctuary of the kitchen, a definitive female space in Almodóvar films,
with words emblazoned on her T-shirt, “WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS.” In this budding friendship, Ana reveals the
cause of her initial trepidation in getting pregnant, yet another tragedy, but
one all too familiar in the lives of women.
Like waves against the shore, both become mirror images of one another,
where tenderness leads to affection, and even love, eventually sharing the same
bed, developing a brazenly sexual love affair, beautifully realized through the
music of Janis Joplin, after whom she was named, Janis Joplin - Summertime YouTube (4:00),
heightening the sexual allure of the scene, a throwback to the free love era,
yet meticulously done. Ana seems more
lovestruck in a dreamy kind of way, naïve and overly innocent, having never
heard of Janis Joplin, overwhelmed by a maternal comfort and trust provided
that was always missing with her own mother, while the more mature Janis has
other options in play. They soon go back
to leading their own lives, yet come together in the end during a women’s
solidarity march to the excavation site, a female re-enactment of Giuseppe
Pellizza da Volpedo’s 1901 painting Il
quarto stato (Original file).
Almodóvar concocts a story about mothers searching for and
then discovering terrible truths, where confronting their own personal
tragedies frames a larger question about finding the hidden secrets of a nation
that struggles to come to terms with the collective memory of the Spanish Civil
War, and the 40 years of fascist dictatorship that ensued, as the streets of
Madrid are named after the generals who displaced and killed thousands. Spain is believed to have more mass graves
than any country except Cambodia. Part
of the problem is there’s been no public funding for exhumations, so
individuals or villages (which is what happens here) have had to scrape
together funding from alternative, private sources, not really knowing where to
start. While the nation has taken
strides to remove fascist shrines, in accordance with the Historical Memory
Law, it was only in 2019 that Franco’s shrine was removed, following a long and
controversial legal process, from the Valley of the Fallen, where it had become
a far-right sanctuary, a fascist temple that exalted the memory of General
Francisco Franco and his 36-year dictatorship.
Partly built by the forced labor of political prisoners, the entire grounds
of the Valley of the Fallen covers more than 3,360 acres, and is Spain’s
largest mass grave, containing the remains of more than 33,000 victims, so a
story witnessing Janis bringing justice to her family feels deeply personal,
particularly to viewers in Spain, where so many never had a single conversation
about Franco or that time, where much of this history has been forgotten
through political amnesia. Accordingly,
one of the more straightforward sections of the film leads back to the elderly
women in Janis’s home town, speaking movingly about what losing their fathers
and grandfathers meant to them. All of
which seems to suggest that fascist legacies continue, often in ways people
can’t anticipate, corroding lives over decades and generations, where their
descendants continue to be victims, as it still tears families apart even after
all these years, haunting everyone else as well, right down to their private
lives, and their collective psyches.
It’s worth pointing out that this film has had greater success in
international festivals than in Spain itself, where it has not been a massive
box office hit, suggesting Spain still remains deeply divided about the Franco
historical past. Janis, herself, offers
a history lesson to young Ana, angrily reminding her that she needs to know
what type of country she lives in.
Penélope Cruz has become associated with the voice of Almodóvar,
appearing in 7 of his last 11 films, and nominated for a Best Actress award for
her role here, yet much of this feels exaggerated and over-the-top, told with a
melodramatic assurance, offering surprising revelations, dry humor, and
unbridled emotion, all expressed through the saturated cinematography of José
Luis Alcaine, filled with that strikingly bold color scheme from Antxón Gómez’s
production design, and a percussive Hitchcockian score by Alberto Iglesias,
which is particularly effective over the closing credits sequence, which is
among the more cleverly designed sequences, filmed as if examining developing
photographs, with animated writing on each frame. Over the past forty years, Almodóvar’s films have gone from wildly flamboyant and
transgressive, filled with sexual deviations and rebellious asides, to a
gradually more serious and contemplative aesthetic, where even in his most
recent films, life is not what it seems, as Pain
and Glory (Dolor y Gloria) (2019) plays with the viewer’s understanding of
reality, moving in and out of time, altering one’s idea of memory, while in Julieta
(2016), a middle-aged woman confronts the ghosts of her life. Women throughout his career have always
inhabited characteristics of a fearless strength, not always by choice, but
they have adapted to the tragedies that have often overwhelmed them, finding a
way to move on in their lives, as if unscathed from the stain of history. Janis was raised by a grandmother who recalled
the most intimate details of the war and lived most of her life under
dictatorship, transferring her fierce independent values to Janis, who becomes
an ardent proponent for her great-grandfather’s cause. Conversely, Ana was raised by an indifferent
and apolitical mother who never instilled her daughter with a sense of
indignance for her country’s past evils, believing instead that “all actors are
leftists,” which might suggest she’s right-leaning, yet, ironically, her big
break came with a playwright shot by the fascists. In this film, with Spain, along with other
parts of Europe (and even America), presently undergoing a wave of neofascism,
where Vox, the far-right party now in Spain, is dedicated to rewriting history
from a very Franco-friendly point of view, claiming it was the Republicans that
started the war, Almodóvar stares straight into the eye of that dilemma,
declaring “No one in your family has told you the truth about your
country.” The personal and the political
become an indistinguishable part of the Spanish nation’s collective psyche,
where it is only by confronting the crimes of the past that Spain’s modern era
population can hopefully address the future.
In today’s political reality, it is a human right of dignity that
families have an opportunity in honoring and remembering the lives of those
they have lost.
