Two days ago I saw Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers (Sony Pictures Classics, 12.24.21). I’m in 100% agreement with the 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. Okay, it’s not perfect, but it comes awfully close to that. I was murmuring to myself “this is easily one of the year’s best so far…this, King Richard, Cyrano and Asghar Farhadi‘s A Hero.”
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has written that Parallel Mothers is the finest Almodovar film since All About My Mother. I think it’s his best since Habla Con Ella (’02) or Volver (’06).
HE to friendo: “I’m not fully persuaded that the forensic finale ties in as profoundly or exactingly as Pedro intended, but it ‘works’ for the most part — it harmonizes with the whole children, family and continuity thing. He’s such a clean and commanding and confident filmmaker, especially when the story focuses on women and mothering.”
Friendo to HE: “Yes, some have a problem with the ending and I understand why, but I thought he made it tie in. The idea is that these people in Spain cannot be whole, as individuals or as families, until they come to grips with the past. It worked poetically. I found the last scene powerful and moving.”
One of the things I adore about Parallel Mothers is that it understands and respects a basic biological fact, a fact that Hollywood has only occasionally acknowledged. The bedrock genetic reality of family resemblance.
Almodovar clearly respects the fact that genetic recognition is always there, and don’t tell me that sometimes a baby will resemble his or her grandfather or grandmother more than his or her mother or father because that kind of thing is highly unusual.
I’ve explained that George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar has zero respect for the parental resemblance factor, at least as far as the casting of young Daniel Ranieri is concerned. Clooney would have us believe that Ranieri, who looks (take your pick) Sicilian or Lebanese or Egyptian or Jordanian, is going to grow up to be Tye Sheridan — a non-starter.
Clooney could be saying to his audience, “I know the kid doesn’t look like Lily and Max but there’s this whole woke and diversity thing going on now, and we have to play ball with woke Stalinist attitudes.”
Pedro’s film sits on the opposite side of the canyon — it completely respects the family resemblance thing, and in fact uses it as a plot point.
Without giving away too much of the story, Penélope Cruz is Janis, a Madrid-residing photographer who becomes pregnant by Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a kind of biologist-anthropologist who’s doing forensic studies of the skeletons of victims who were disappeared by the Franco regime.
Their affair has been on the sly as Arturo is married to a woman who’s struggling with cancer. Anyway, the baby (a daughter) arrives and one day Arturo drops by. The instant he lays eyes on her you can tell that he’s a tad confused. He senses thqt something might be wrong as he sees nothing of himself in the child’s features. We can see this also — it’s obvious.
This struck me as a revelation. A movie that actually acknowledges that kids look like their parents (or occasionally like their grandparents)…imagine! Only rarely will U.S.-made films allow for this. For thousands of years people have understood it and that’s the way it was until Hollywood came along.
I’ve been sent a scene that was allegedly cut out of The Tender Bar script. Dorothy Moehringer, the mother of Sheridan’s J.R. Moehringer. is played by Lily Rabe, the real-life daughter of David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh. The baby is only a couple of hours old, and Dorothy’s no-good, boozing, talk-show hosting husband (Max Martini) strolls into Dorothy’s hospital room to see his son for the first time.
Rabe and Martini have similar genes — they both have some kind of paleface German or Irish or Northern Italian thing going on. Papa leans over the bassinet, peers in.
Papa Moehringer (smiling at the just-born J.R.] There he is!
Dorothy Moehringer (almost tearfully): He’s ours, and so beautiful.
Papa: Hey, buddy! (pause)
Dorothy can sense something in Max’s manner.
Dorothy: What?
Papa: I was just kinda asking myself, who does he look more like?
Dorothy: What do you mean?
Papa Well…
Dorothy: What?
Papa: He kinda looks like Omar Sharif.
Dorothy: What? He’s our son.
Papa: I’m saying that I’m overjoyed that the delivery went well and everyone is in good health, but I don’t recognize anything in his features. I don’t see you or me or our parents…I don’t see it.
Dorothy: God, what’s wrong with you?
Papa: He looks like the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser. What am I supposed to do, say “wow, he looks so much like us”? He doesn’t.
Dorothy: You’re a monster! How dare you say this? I was in labor for three hours. He just came out of me two hours ago.
Papa: He’s a beautiful kid and I really love his eyes and his smile, but maybe they made a mistake. It happens.
Dorothy: I’d like you to leave now.
Papa: You don’t have to get all pissy. I’m just saying what’s obvious.
Dorothy: I’d like to get some sleep, and you’re really bothering me.
Papa: Dorothy…
Dorothy: Just leave, please.
If The Tender Bar has been directed and written by Pedro Almodovar, this scene would have been shot and almost certainly put into the finished film.