Starring: Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Rossy de Palma
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Runtime: 123 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This subtitled Spanish film tells the story of two single women, who give birth on the same day. Their interaction forges a close relationship, and the film describes experiences that affect their lives significantly. The film deals simultaneously with a dark period in Spanish history.
This subtitled Spanish movie brings together again the outstanding partnership between actress Penelope Cruz and director Pedro Almodovar. It is their eighth film together over a period of nearly 25 years.
The film opens with Janis (Cruz), a successful magazine photographer, who asks for help from a forensic archeologist, Arturo (Elejalde) to excavate an unmarked mass grave where her great grandfather and nine other people were buried after being murdered by Franco loyalists in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. Arturo later gets Janis pregnant and she checks into hospital to give birth. In the film, two women – Ana (Smit), and Janis – meet in the same hospital room. Janis is nearly 40 years old; she rejects the possibility of abortion and chooses instead happiness with her child. Ana, however, is only 17 and has been gang-raped, and she is conflicted and traumatised about what has happened to her, and what is happening now. In talking together, the two women forge a meaningful relationship. Just after birth, they go their separate ways, but months later they meet again and reconnect intensely.
Cruz won an award for Best Actress at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival for her role in the film, and the movie was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2022 Golden Globe Awards. Other awards, for which it has been nominated, have yet to be decided.
The film mixes history with moral dilemmas, personal drama, and comedy. It is full of twists and turns and has a plot line that moves characters around in unexpected ways. The film offers an involving account of romance, friendship, and the power of motherhood. It is impeccably crafted by Almovodar, and beautifully acted by Cruz. There is a startling secret that Janis keeps from Ana that is revealed mid-film, which turns the movie almost upside-down.
In hospital and afterwards, the two women share their lives. The film embeds its plot line within a traumatic historical context and sets the stage for the personal interactions between the two women to link with important political, historical and psychological events. As the relationship between the two women deepens, so also the historical significance of past war atrocities accumulates. The film addresses the themes of how the Spanish Civil War devastated countless lives, and how tragic war events came to have long-term effects on those who are still living, including Janis, Ana, and Arturo.
In the film, the horrors of Franco’s Spain are evident. We, the viewers, become aware that the lives and experiences of the two women crisscross in a complicated way. Cruz empowers her scenes with empathy and feeling, and she heads the film. But the movie is a powerful statement of two strong and articulate women that draws strength from the memories of people now being remembered, and those who lived before. The combination of events makes the film emotionally moving and engrossing. There are melodramatic moments in the telling, but the film creatively mixes historical memory with romance, feelings of betrayal, and the joy of motherhood.
The film is fearlessly personal in the relationships it shows among its characters, and it pursues the politics and impact of history with skill. The film ends with a plea by Almovodar: No history is ever mute, and we, the viewers of his film, should respect its nature. This is a film that powerfully illustrates the wisdom, and significance of acknowledging the truth of what has gone before.
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