IT’S WHAT you could call a match made in movie-making heaven. It is of course the combination of Spanish writer and director Pedro Almodovar and Spanish star Penelope Cruz.
The pair have worked together on numerous occasions with films like 1999’s acclaimed All About My Mother, which won the best foreign language film Oscar, and other titles like 2006’s Volver, and Pain And Glory in 2019.
But it’s their latest collaboration, Parallel Mothers, that is causing a buzz, with film critics citing it as some of the best work done by the director and his muse.
“With Penelope since the very first moment, we felt both of us, we felt this chemistry between us…” the director says, heaping praise on 47-year-old Cruz, whose other film credits include her Oscar-winning role in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Blow, Vanilla Sky and 2011’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
“She is a very good actress, I admire her a lot,” he says earnestly.
The film, which also sees him reunited with another of his muses, actress Rossy de Palma, tells the story of two women – Janis (Cruz’s character) and Ana (Milena Smit) – who meet in a hospital as they’re both due to give birth.
The movie paints what has been described as a “melodramatic portrait of parenthood”, and the film-maker also explores one of the dark chapters of his country’s history during the Spanish Civil War: mass graves.
Speaking about the birth scenes in the film, Cruz recently said on The Graham Norton Show that one of Almodovar’s many strengths is that he’s “not afraid to ask questions”.
She told the BBC talk show: “He gave me and the other women a lot of freedom and trust. He pointed the camera at me and just said, ‘Have a baby’.”
For Almodovar, who notched up two Golden Globe nominations for Parallel Mothers, the story was inspired by something he’d seen on TV.
Weaving in the historical elements of the Civil War is something he’s not done before on screen because, he says, he hadn’t found a script that would allow him to “tackle the subject”.
“It was very relevant to talk about the subject now in particular, because since then we’ve got far-right party that’s trying to rewrite history,” the 72-year-old explains, adding: “So I wanted to make a film to share a story that allows younger audiences to see the reality of history and raise and give visibility to the fact that there’s over 100,000 people that are still in unmarked mass graves…”
He adds: “The history of Spain is very weird – I mean, it’s not parallel like the rest of Europe.”
Finding a comparison for his muse, Cruz, he recently also used an example from Europe, telling The Graham Norton Show: “For me she is the perfect type of mother.
“Before Penelope, the type of housewife in Spanish cinema was short and fat – not attractive at all.
“Penelope is like an Italian housewife, like Sophia Loren. Since Penelope, all housewives in Spanish films are now very attractive!”
Given that this is his 22nd feature film, Almodovar is also realistic about the challenges he faced in making it.
“The most difficult thing was to merge the subject as dark as the mass graves with the story of these two mothers and the subject of motherhood and to give it nuance; the most difficult really was to mix these two themes together and with the necessary depth,” he explains.
And depth is something he reflects on too, in relation to the talent he works with over and over again, like Cruz.
“When you work with someone who you get along with and who you understand so well, the natural thing for me is to just keep working with them,” he says.
“The actors that I’ve collaborated with the most and the best, they become part of my artistic family and they also give me a very big sense of security…
“Despite the fact that making a movie is so uncertain… when you’re working with people who you have so much faith in, you already have certain assurances of what it’s going to look like.”
Almodovar is modest when asked about the rave reviews for his work from critics, but effuses freely about Cruz.
“What I can say is that it is the more complex character for her, because she’s very far from the character. So it was very hard to do it. So I’m very happy that, in general, all the, you know, the reviews they say that it’s the best of her performances and perhaps it is, but she worked very hard for this.
“Just to play someone that is trying to pretend something, but hiding something is always very difficult. And she was always hiding her secret, but behaving like if didn’t exist. So that is always very difficult and she did it wonderfully.”
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin star Cruz, who is married to actor Javier Bardem with whom she has two children, spoke recently about motherhood and Almodovar’s “amazing” filming schedule.
During a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors and speaking to Benedict Cumberbatch, she said: “My approach to work really changed because, before I was a mother I used to make myself suffer on purpose – like the extra, gratuitous amount of suffering.
“But now I really try not to bring that darkness or that energy home. Some days I just had to stay with Pedro for an extra hour and just cry it out right there with him and hug him and slowly come back to reality.”
The actress added: “Pedro has the most perfect, amazing schedule because you can take your kids to school and then go to the set and then it’s like 10 hours. He doesn’t like starting too early or finishing too late.”
Parallel Mothers is in cinemas now.
