Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz look to team up on motherhood-themed film
Pedro Almodóvar and his favorite female lead Penelope Cruz look set to re-team on feature “Madres paralelas,” a Madrid-set drama that returns to Almodóvar’s biggest creative inspiration — motherhood — and a model that has served him very well over the last 30 years.
Set to go into pre-production in October, “Madres paralelas” is scheduled to shoot from February next year and bow commercially in Spanish theaters by the end of 2021, Agustín Almodóvar — Pedro Almodóvar’s brother and producer — told Variety.
Though there is still no formal contract with Cruz, she has read and liked the screenplay, Pedro Almodóvar commented.
“Madres paralelas” is a project that Almodóvar has developed over time. However, three months of confinement during Spain’s COVID-19 crisis allowed him to advance and finish the screenplay, which turns on two mothers who give birth the same day. The film follows their parallel lives over their first and second years raising their children, Almodóvar told Spanish press agency EFE, which broke the news of what looks like Almodóvar’s next feature.
Almodóvar picks up on this in “Pain and Glory,” the most directly autobiographical of his films, whose most memorable scenes are inspired by memories of his own inspirational relationship with his mother.
“Madres paralelas” will shoot, like nearly all Almodóvar’s productions since 1988’s “The Law of Desire,” at least partly in Madrid and totally in Spanish, produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García at El Deseo, the company Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar set up to make “The Law of Desire.”