Parallel Mothers

So there's something so sweet there.

And I have to tell you, when you were nominated for Parallel Mothers, it was the sweetest thing.

I was coming in.

I think it was the Academy Luncheon or something.

We'll pick up those slides in a second.

Almodovar made a film with Penelope Cruz called Parallel Mothers, where he addresses this need to find these relatives that are all in mass graves and who, you know, like you say, were caught in this insane war between powers, because that's really what it is.

It's who wants to be more powerful.

And Lorca, whose body has never been found, he's emblematic of this whole thing.

And I don't really know anything about it.

You know, Almodovar is like, you know, Parallel Mothers did really good the year it came out.

But the one last year with Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore kind of went nowhere.

So he's really like, it's either going to hit and it'll be up for a bunch or it's just going to be like, we kind of forgot it ever happened.

He brings it up in his films, his big melodramas, and there's quite often a nod back to this because it is such a part of the culture that this happened and there's generations.

And the film Parallel Mothers – Devastated me with the way it wove a Spanish Civil War storyline into the surface story of a baby swap, really.

It was Penelope Cruz and, yeah, babies mixed at birth.

But then it turned into this really profound, I thought, story of generational trauma and just kind of the way it used that surface storyline to then trust that the audience would get you there to – This much deeper, more emotional story of how things aren't resolved in the culture because of this, how it broke down, the idea of community.

She's in quite a few.

Have you never seen Parallel Mothers? No, I

haven't.

I feel like if that came out two years later, I would have seen it in a cinema.

I didn't realize.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, I'll give you parallel mothers because you just named it.

The other one is from 2009.

... you know, like there...

If you remember in, in, like in Almodovar's "Parallel Mothers," there's a whole storyline about the controversy about bodies that were buried by the fascists-

Hmm

... and whether or not they should be dug up and, you know, have the, the, the remains identified 'cause there are still living family members who want closure, and there's other people like, "Oh, it's the past.

And yes, and canceled in life.

Um, winner of Best Actress was Kristen Stewart, Spencer, Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos, Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers, Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter, Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

I think it was Olivia Colman from memory.

And you would be wrong.

Yeah.

For me this time, um, is very different from, uh, Parallel Mothers five years ago because I think, uh, at that, at that time I was, uh, so much younger, so I, I, I felt like, um, like a child, [laughs] almost.

And, and in, in this film, um, yeah, the, the pass of the time has become, uh, so important for me for learning and, and yeah, understand what Pedro needs, uh, to a character and, and almost the, yeah, the beautiful explanation and, and the, the writing of the script.

And I think I c- I, I could, um, represent, um, in a more adult way, um, this character.