Cert 15
9th. February 2023
Low Angeles Film Critics Association Awards – Best Actress – Penelope Cruz; Volvo Cup for Best Actress 2021 – Penelope Cruz from Venice International Film Festival.
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Milner Smit
Country: Spain Spanish (English subs) 120 minutes
UK release date: Jan 2022
On the surface this is the story of two single women who meet at a hospital as they are about to give birth. One is middle aged with no regrets while the other is adolescent and scared. The two women form a strong bond with one another as they both contemplate motherhood. However, their story is not straightforward and Almodóvar instead uses multiple generations of matriarchs to shine a light on the families irreparably broken by the cruelty of Spain’s not so distant fascist regime.
“Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie has the warmth and the grandiloquent flair of a picture from Hollywood’s golden age and the whiplash twists and addictive sugar rush bumps of daytime soap.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“This latest picture shares with his last full length feature ‘Pain & Glory’ (2019), the message that secrets are best unearthed and confronted if there is any hope of moving forward.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer
Film Club at the Roxy 