PARALLEL MOTHERS

Between past and present

Two women, Janis and Ana, coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.

“I tend to tell stories about mothers looking for a family,” admits Almodóvar. “With Parallel Mothers, the two women at the heart of the film are both orphans and single mothers. What I propose in these movies is that the family structure has changed enormously over the last 20 years. In Spain, the concept of family was inextricably linked to the Catholic ideal of the family; it always had that religious undertone. That’s far from being the reality of today. Families no longer need to have a religious dimension. They are structured through the love and care for their children rather than any sort of duty to the Church.”

Pedro Almodóvar