Parallel Mothers

"Oscar-caliber screenwriting and direction and easily one of Almodóvar's best films."

— Dwight Brown, National Newspaper Publishers Association

"This is probably the most I've loved a Penélope Cruz performance ever, which is saying a lot because she's just marvelous."

— Amy Nicholson, FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles)

"Disarmingly relatable and unpredictable, Parallel Mothers is an unflinching and unforgettable look at motherhood, love, and loss."

— Sarah Bea Milner, Screen Rant

"From opening frame to closing titles, this is resoundingly, exquisitely, the Penélope Cruz show. But with a lesson in Spanish history."

— Kevin Maher, Times (UK)

"Parallel Mothers is a movie of infinite tenderness, that rare ode to motherhood that acknowledges mothers as women first and mothers second."

— Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine

"A ravishingly crafted work that again illustrates with ineffable beauty that no one uses the expressive power of color and design quite like Almodóvar."

— David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

"Almodóvar juggles comedy and drama to terrifically entertaining ends, aided by a tip-top Penélope Cruz. It's hard to think of a more exciting actor-director partnership working today."

— Ian Freer, Empire Magazine

"Almodovar shows us that he's as playful, adventurous and relevant as ever in this wickedly good and surprisingly emotional melodrama, which tackles weighty issues of history, birthright and bonds between women."

— Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News

"This wonderful, often sunny drama also evokes pain, betrayal, inconsolable loss followed by rebirth and -- far from what you might expect at this point in Mr. Almodóvar's dazzling career -- haunting echoes of his nation's anguished past."

— Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

"The balance of light and dark, birth and death, and the power of women to create life, and to preserve memory over generations in the face of injustice, melds in a warm, humanistic and politically outspoken drama from the unflinching master."

— Thelma Adams, AARP Movies for Grownups

"Note to Oscar: Make sure a best actress nomination happens for the blazing Penelope Cruz in this emotional powerhouse from director Pedro Almodovar about a Madrid photographer coping with an unplanned pregnancy and a tangled political past."

— Peter Travers, ABC News

"Only Pedro Almodóvar could wrap a cry of pain about Spain’s inability to come to terms with its recent dark history into a gorgeous-looking melodrama about two mothers drawn by fate into a complicated, painful and ultimately nourishing relationship."

— Dave Calhoun, Time Out

"Particularly paired with Cruz’s knockout performance of a woman whose life endures the legacy left by the trauma of her family’s unresolved past, Parallel Mothers is a deeply political example of what is lost when we have forgotten—and what is achieved when we fight to remember."

— Natalia Keogan, Paste Magazine

"In a world turned careful and considered (not by choice but by necessity) this extravagant, exuberant, magnificently messy movie, punch-drunk on story and delirious with drama, is the antidote to a cinematic lethargy you may not even have known you were feeling, until one of its legitimately insane plot pirouettes forcibly reminds you just how much dimension and chaos and vitality a flat beam of light projected onto a wall can contain."

— Jessica Kiang, The Playlist