Parallel Mothers, Movie Review

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 is Western Monarch Day: This morning, I decided to watch a Spanish movie on the indie channel. Parallel Mothers is a 2021 Spanish drama directed and written Pedro Almodovar, produced by Agustin Almodovar, and starring Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Rossy de Palma, and Julieta Serrano.

A 2021 Spanish Drama

Chaos and confusion surround the life of Janis Martinez. While working as a photographer, she meets a forensic archaeologist. She asks him to dig up a mass grave where her great-grandfather was buried with others during the Spanish Civil War. Her grandmother wants to find her father and give him a proper burial. As she works with him, they have an affair and she gets pregnant. She decides to keep the baby and raise it as a single mother, even though Arturo wants to be with his ailing wife.

At the hospital, Janis shares her room with a single teenage mother. They bond and become friends. When they each return to their home, Janis struggles to be a single mother, often hiring others to help her. Ana enjoys being a single mother, although her baby suddenly dies in her crib. Arturo denies that Janis’ baby is his. Janis takes a maternity test, which displays that she isn’t this baby’s mother. After hearing Ana’s baby died, she hires Ana to be her nanny. Janis takes some swab tests from Ana, and the results state that Ana is Cecilia’s real mother.

It is later revealed that the babies must have been swapped at the hospital, and Janis’ baby had died with Ana. Ana was gang-raped, and the boys threatened to post the video on the internet if she tells anyone about the rape. She isn’t even sure which boy was her baby’s real father. Ana and Janis develop an intimate relationship while living together. Janis eventually shows Ana the maternity test results.

Janis’ mother was a hippy and she had died young. Janis’ grandmother had raised her. People gather at the mass grave to mourn over the murdered people who were buried. Ana and Cecilia join Janis because they are now a part of her extended family. Janis moves on with Arturo, and they get pregnant again. There seems to be identity crisis. They seem at peace at the end. Ana takes care of her baby, Janis finds her great-grandfather’s body, among many others, and Janis gets pregnant again to have her own baby.

The movie was shot in Madrid. Torrelaguna, and Torremocha de Jarama.

Is accidentally swapping babies in hospitals still happening?   I remember watching a 1991 American film, Switched at Birth, on television. Then, news stations interviewed the real people involved in this accidental baby-switching inside the hospital. It messed up a lot of people’s lives because everyone involved felt they were living a lie with the wrong family, although they were used to the family that raised them as their real kid.