Parallel Mothers

Pedro Almodóvar's latest women-focused drama is a deliberately soap opera-esque piece starring Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit as new mothers connected by fate.

Pedro Almodóvar’s movies are always interesting because he himself is so: a gay Spaniard iconoclast coming from a very macho culture whose films are nearly always primarily focused on women. In particular the theme of motherhood and women’s relationships with their children often figure as more important in his cinema than those they have with their lovers, which tend to be intense but fleeting.

His newest, “Parallel Mothers,” probably belongs in the minor works of his expansive oeuvre, but it’s still a compelling piece with a deliberately soap opera-esque feel.

Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit play two women who meet in the hospital as they’re about to have their babies. Other than being first-time mothers who share the circumstance that the father of their children is not in the picture, they couldn’t be more different — though they will find themselves bound by a precarious and sometimes cruel fate.