Cel­e­brat­ing the com­plex­i­ty of moth­er­hood with Almod­ó­var and Gyllenhaal

In Pedro Almodóvar’s Par­al­lel Moth­ers, two expec­tant sin­gle moth­ers meet in a mater­ni­ty ward, unaware of how their lives will soon inter­twine. Janis (Pené­lope Cruz) is a first-time mid­dle-aged moth­er thrilled at the prospect of hav­ing a child. Oppo­site is Ana (Mile­na Smit) an ado­les­cent pet­ri­fied by her unplanned preg­nan­cy. Janis and Ana’s new­borns are briefly sep­a­rat­ed from them in the hos­pi­tal, but when Janis takes her baby home, events con­spire to plant a seed of doubt in her mind. A DNA test reunites the two moth­ers and re-estab­lish­es their blos­som­ing friendship.

The film con­nects the sto­ry of moth­er­ly sol­i­dar­i­ty between Janis and Ana with an even big­ger pic­ture as Janis par­tic­i­pates in an inves­ti­ga­tion of unmarked mass graves from the Span­ish Civ­il War. With his­tor­i­cal prece­dent loom­ing in the back­ground, Par­al­lel Moth­ers becomes a sto­ry of con­tem­po­rary moth­ers and moth­ers of the past, hon­our­ing the gen­er­a­tional suf­fer­ing of the ones left behind; the women impact­ed by the dark his­to­ry of their country.

Under­scored by Janis cook­ing din­ner while wear­ing a ​‘The Future Is Female’ t‑shirt, it is crys­tal clear that Almod­ó­var wish­es to por­tray mod­ern moth­er­hood through its main char­ac­ter. Janis might be in the kitchen, but Almod­ó­var does not believe she belongs in the kitchen. Quite the oppo­site, Almod­ó­var undoubt­ed­ly applies this stereo­type to enhance his desire to chal­lenge the expec­ta­tions of a mater­nal fig­ure, as Janis and Ana defy these mater­nal stereo­types in mul­ti­ple ways through­out the film, whether it be the fact they are both rais­ing their daugh­ters as sin­gle moth­ers or that Janis still pri­ori­tis­es her career as a photographer.

The com­plex­i­ty of moth­er­hood is sim­i­lar­ly explored in Mag­gie Gyllenhaal’s fea­ture debut The Lost Daugh­ter, adapt­ed from Ele­na Ferrante’s nov­el of the same name, where moth­er­ly dis­con­nec­tion is at the cen­tre of a sto­ry that tears apart the ide­al­ism sur­round­ing mater­nal instincts.

When Leda (Olivia Col­man) hol­i­days on a Greek island, her peace is dis­rupt­ed by a noisy fam­i­ly stay­ing on the same beach. Leda befriends a young moth­er with­in the group, Nina (Dako­ta John­son), and as she watch­es her strug­gle with the sym­bi­ot­ic yet suf­fo­cat­ing rela­tion­ship Nina has with her daugh­ter Ele­na, it stirs uncom­fort­able mem­o­ries of Leda’s past. Through a series of flash­backs, The Lost Daugh­ter breaks some of the sacred taboos of moth­er­hood as we see how the younger Leda (Jessie Buck­ley) strug­gled to cope with the demands of chil­drea­r­ing and even­tu­al­ly left her young daugh­ters, putting her needs and ambi­tions before theirs to pur­sue a career as an academic.

The sub­ject of post­na­tal depres­sion is also briefly allud­ed to, most obvi­ous­ly when Nina express­es that she might ​“have depres­sion, or some­thing”. This allows Leda to con­sid­er her own con­flict with the con­stant guilt com­plex of liv­ing up to the end­less respon­si­bil­i­ties of being a moth­er as she relives past mem­o­ries. The feel­ing of guilt slow­ly takes up most of Leda’s remem­brance of her role as a moth­er, which makes the film ever so anx­i­ety-pro­vok­ing to watch.

The guilt begins in her mem­o­ries of being a young moth­er not able to pro­vide the child­care expect­ed of her, but con­tin­ues in the mem­o­ry of leav­ing her daugh­ters, and crys­tallis­es when Leda admits to Nina that leav­ing ​“felt amaz­ing”. Gyl­len­haal dares to bring up stig­ma­tised and del­i­cate aspects of moth­er­hood, leav­ing a nuanced por­tray­al that chal­lenges its view­ers as she con­fronts us with the dark­er sides of maternity.

Beyond moth­er­hood, both films raise the ques­tion of female desire after preg­nan­cy and desir­abil­i­ty as a par­ent. In Par­al­lel Moth­ers, Janis and Ana ini­ti­ate a roman­tic rela­tion­ship explor­ing their own sex­u­al desires. Not only adds this a lay­er of queer explo­ration to these female char­ac­ters’ sex­u­al lives, Almod­ó­var also uses their sex­u­al­i­ty and desire as a tool to cel­e­brate and empow­er Ana and Janis as the desir­able women and moth­ers they are. By defy­ing the idea of mater­ni­ty elim­i­nat­ing the sex­u­al capac­i­ty and per­cep­tion of women, Almod­ó­var there­by uses female sex­u­al­i­ty to craft moth­er­ly fig­ures that are nuanced, desir­able and non-con­form­ing to archa­ic stereo­types of mothers.

In The Lost Daugh­ter, Gyl­len­haal uses sex­u­al affairs in both Leda and Nina’s life to explore the expec­ta­tions of a moth­er and wife. Through flash­backs, Leda relives her past affair with a fel­low pro­fes­sor, while leav­ing her daugh­ters behind sole­ly in the care of their father. Nina, on the con­trary, finds her­self explor­ing an affair with the young beach bar assis­tant Will (Paul Mescal), which Leda unwill­ing­ly becomes entan­gled in.

The explo­ration into both Leda and Nina’s sex­u­al rela­tion­ships allows Gyl­len­haal to play on the view­ers’ expec­ta­tions of a mater­nal fig­ure and sub­vert these expec­ta­tions to make the char­ac­ters seem uncom­fort­ably unsym­pa­thet­ic. The affairs in both women’s lives invite the view­er to study their own reac­tions, and how it’s often per­ceived as an act of self­ish­ness when moth­ers pri­ori­tise their well­be­ing – sex­u­al­ly as well as men­tal­ly – bal­anc­ing the needs of their chil­dren with their own. It feels shock­ing in con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma to wit­ness a moth­er who is not patient, com­posed or nurturing.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in Par­al­lel Moth­ers Almod­ó­var presents Ana’s moth­er Tere­sa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) in an almost vil­lain­ous man­ner, as she pri­ori­tis­es her career as an actress instead of offer­ing sup­port for her young daugh­ter Ana as she enters moth­er­hood on her own and clear­ly in need of guid­ance. Ana finds that guid­ance in Janis, allow­ing Par­al­lel Moth­ers to grap­ple with the idea of ​‘a bad moth­er’ and ​‘a good moth­er’ in con­trast­ing these dif­fer­ent atti­tudes to motherhood.

Both films play on our fixed expec­ta­tions of what makes a moth­er, and how women who reject ideas of this are ostracised by soci­ety. ​“I’m an unnat­ur­al moth­er”, Leda claims in The Lost Daugh­ter, but what makes a moth­er nat­ur­al or unnat­ur­al? Par­al­lel Moth­ers and The Lost Daugh­ter both work as an explo­ration into the ​‘guilt com­plex’ of moth­er­hood and the judge­ment moth­ers often face from out­side perspectives.

Despite the dif­fer­ence in tone and style between Par­al­lel Moth­ers and The Lost Daugh­ter, these films come togeth­er to cel­e­brate moth­ers while lift­ing the lid on less glam­orous and dis­cussed aspects of this expe­ri­ence. In bring­ing these mat­ters to the screen, per­haps more moth­ers grap­pling with the highs and lows of chil­drea­r­ing might feel their expe­ri­ence is seen and understood.

Sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions, exclu­sive essays and more