Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers is a film that throbs with life messy, unpredictable, and vibrantly human. At 72, the Spanish auteur has lost none of his flair for melodrama, nor his ability to weave personal and political histories into stories that feel both intimate and epic. Here, he gifts Penélope Cruz yet another role that seems tailor-made for her fiery magnetism, while crafting a narrative that balances soap opera twists with profound meditations on legacy, trauma, and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.

Cruz plays Janis, a middle-aged photographer who becomes pregnant after a passionate affair with a forensic anthropologist (Israel Elejalde). Their chance encounter in a Madrid bar leads not just to a pregnancy, but to a shared interest in excavating a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War a buried history that mirrors the personal secrets about to surface in Janis’ life. When she meets Ana (a remarkable Milena Smit), a teenage mother sharing her hospital room, their lives become entangled in ways that are both shocking and deeply inevitable.

Almodóvar has always been a master of color and composition, and Parallel Mothers might be his most visually sumptuous film in years. The reds are deeper, the textures richer Janis’ apartment feels like a living extension of her personality, all warm tones and curated chaos. Yet for all its aesthetic pleasures, the film’s power lies in its performances. Cruz has never been better, balancing Janis’ sharp wit with raw vulnerability, while Smit matches her step for step, their chemistry oscillating between tenderness and tension.

The film’s first half unfolds like a telenovela, complete with mistaken identities and revelations that could feel contrived in lesser hands. But Almodóvar is playing a deeper game. As the story progresses, the personal drama becomes inseparable from Spain’s historical amnesia the unhealed wounds of Franco’s regime, the ghosts that still haunt the country’s collective memory. The way Janis and Ana’s lives intersect with the exhumation of the past is masterful, a reminder that history is never truly buried, just waiting for someone to dig it up.

If the film stumbles, it’s in its final act, where Almodóvar’s ambition occasionally outpaces the narrative. Some threads resolve too neatly, while others particularly Ana’s relationship with her own estranged mother (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) feel underexplored. Yet even these missteps can’t dull the film’s emotional impact.

Parallel Mothers is a testament to Almodóvar’s enduring genius a filmmaker who can make the grand feel personal, and the personal feel universal. It’s a film about bloodlines, both literal and metaphorical, and the stories we inherit, conceal, and ultimately must confront. By the time Alberto Iglesias’ haunting score swells over the final frames, you’re left with that rare feeling of having witnessed something alive, urgent, and unshakably human.