Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 20, 2022

There are two scenes in Parallel Mothers (Madres paralelas, 2021) in which Janis Martínez (Penélope Cruz) administers swab tests to three persons: one scene where she gathers saliva from Ana Manso Ferreras (Milena Smit), her recently hired nanny, and from the baby Cecilia in the crib; and another scene were she gives the swab to her aunt. Viewed individually, these scenes don't seem to connect in any way. But when looked at in the larger mosaic of family history and memory, both scenes are definitely interconnected.

Janis works as a photographer for a fashion magazine in Madrid. During one of her shoots, she meets the handsome Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a forensic anthropologist. Janis has long been interested in what happened to her great-grandfather and 100,000 Spanish citizens who disappeared at the hands of the brutal General Francisco Franco and his fascistic Falangists during the Spanish Civil War. Janis reckons that her great-grandfather and nine others are lying in mass unmarked graves. She asks Arturo if he can undertake an excavation to unearth their remains and he replies that it'll be necessary to appoint a commission first to secure the funding. Janis has more than a professional interest in Arturo. Nearing forty, she's never been married or had kids. She shares an evening of passion with him as the two make love. After Janis becomes pregnant, Arturo tells her he can't commit to her because he's married and his wife is battling cancer. About a year after she began her relationship with him, she's still more than happy to have his baby, though. Someone who's wholly unhappy to be having a baby is 17-year-old Ana, Janis's roommate in a maternity ward. Ana got pregnant in far from ideal circumstances. Her father threw her out after learning about the pregnancy and Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), Ana's mother, is solely focused on a theater career that never quite took off.

Parallel mothers.

The two ladies of different ages become fast friends. But once they have their babies, they go on with their lives raising infants: Ana with Anita and Janis with Cecilia. Teresa promises to help take care of Anita but her theater director informs her that the performance venue has been relocated to Barcelona. Ana grows more independent away from her parents and begins working at a café near Janis's abode. Janis is doing fine with Cecilia thanks to her understanding and supportive friend, Elena (Rossy de Palma), who's also her agent and an editor at the magazine where the two work. Janis is dissatisfied with her young au pair, however, who she she chides for putting on headphones too often and not devoting enough attention to Cecilia. After she dismisses her, Janis reconnects with Ana and offers to pay her to be a live-in nanny. Several twists and shocks are in for the principals.

Auteur Pedro Almodóvar writes and directs Parallel Mothers with a fastidious attention to detail. The contemporary room décor is carefully matched with the actors' attire. Along with Ingmar Bergman, Almodóvar is one of the best directors of women. His seventh collaboration with Penélope Cruz is one of the director/actress' finest pairings. Cruz seems to have an intuitive sense and feel for what he wants in a given scene. Of central importance to Almodóvar and Cruz's Janis are that Spain must not forget the barbaric cruelty inflicted on their ancestors by the Franco regime. For much of his career, Almodóvar has not confronted the Spanish Civil War in his films. But with the passage of the Law of Historical Memory in 2007, which seeks to appropriate funds to disintern the missing remains of those still lost, he can no longer shy away from it. The film's last scene, and what came before it, are both stunning and remarkable in the ways Almodóvar invokes the lessons of the past to inform present predicaments.

Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony Pictures Classics' recent release of Parallel Mothers comes on an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 39.92 GB). While Almodóvar's twenty-third feature is available in 4K on various streaming platforms, there's no UHD disc anywhere. The picture appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The movie was shot on the Sony CineAlta Venice camera using Leitz Summicron-C Lenses. According to Leitz's website, they "highlights all the characteristics that make these lenses unique in the world of motion picture optics." The lenses capture Almodóvar's mise-en-scène with a sharpness and clarity that rival today's best Blu-ray transfers. Frequent cinematographer José Luis Alcaine impeccably balances the Mondrian colors evident in the set décor, art direction, production design, and costumes. The filmmakers primarily prefer the inner and outer colors of a watermelon in a number of scenes. Look at how well coordinated the color of Janis's fruit bowl is with the pail and couch pillows in Screenshot #7. Even the white backdrop beautifully contrasts with the apparel of the photographed subjects in Janis's photo shoots (see frame grabs 4 and 14). Sony encodes the feature at a mean video bitrate of 35204 kbps.

Sony has provided sixteen scene selections for the 123-minute movie.

Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony has supplied a Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (2228 kbps, 16-bit) and a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640 kbps) dubbed in English. One of the pleasures of revisiting Parallel Mothers (especially to non-Spanish speakers) is that multiple viewings are warranted to fully appreciate the subtitled words (words are uttered very fast) along with the beauty of the images. There's the customary rapid-fire speech in an Almodóvar picture. (I didn't even bother listening to the English dub.) There aren't really any action scenes as the film is pretty dialogue-centric. I opine that composer Alberto Iglesias crafts more of a suspenseful thriller in his score than the scenes do by themselves. The music is analogous to Bernard Herrmann's style without ripping off the master. Iglesias employs eerie strings and double bass to gradually build up tension. Also on the soundtrack is George Gershwin's "Summertime" performed by Janis Joplin (Cruz's character is named after the singer) and a rendition of Joseph Kosma's "Autumn Leaves" featuring Miles Davis on trumpet.

Sony includes the option of English SDH as well as subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1:32, 1080p) - Sony's original trailer for Parallel Mothers presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen (average video bitrate: 18008 kbps) with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640 kbps) audio in Spanish and English subtitles. This divulges some big revelations in the course of the plot so don't watch it until after you've seen the film.

• Bonus Previews - trailers for several other Sony titles.

Parallel Mothers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Parallel Mothers is a meditation on family lineage, memory, and history. It's also one of Almodóvar's most accessible films. He uses the potato that Janis is peeling off (prepped for a potato omelet known as the tortilla española) as a metaphor for the familial and historical layers that gradually become peeled off. Seeing this picture wants me to see other Almodóvar films that I've missed: e.g., ones contained in Studio Canal's UK box set from some years ago. Sony delivers practically a perfect transfer for a gorgeous-looking film. The making-of featurette that's on Sony's Spanish BD has been left off here. A STRONG RECOMMENDATION for Parallel Mothers.