Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers Closes The New York Film Festival: Penelope Cruz is Spain’s Sophia Loren loves women. He also loves actors. He could not have been more passionate introducing the stars of his new movie, Parallel Mothers, closing night of the New York Film Festival: Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit. Beautiful women, one older, the other younger, they play women who bond in a maternity ward, each birthing a daughter, and if you know this Spanish auteur’s oeuvre, the event occasions the usual high stakes emotional melodrama for which he famously directs the women to pull back the tears.

For this film, he folds their stories into a historical memory, a time when Fascists came door to door in the Spanish countryside arresting men, shooting them, their fates tied together with barbed wire in mass graves. Having been told of this horrific event by her grandmother, Cruz’s Janis (named for Janis Joplin) seeks to unearth this site in her village so that the men—fathers, brothers, uncles– can be properly mourned and remembered.

These two distinct story lines would occupy two different movies, in lesser hands. Expect to see the Foreign Language Oscar nod, and Best Film, Best Director too. A darling of the American festival scene, Almodovar is right at home in New York; at the NYFF closing night, the film was cheered and feted by many admirers including John Waters, Bruce Weber, Paul Auster and his wife Siri Hustvedt. Tilda Swinton was also on hand, the star of last year’s brilliant Almodovar short, his English language debut, The Human Voice, as a woman well, on the verge . . . .

Asked about his passion for women, especially mothers, Almodovar said when women become mothers, they disappear in desirability. He wants to celebrate women as timeless, desired by men. In the case of Milena Smit, he asked us all to remember her at this debut of a bright career. As for, Penelope Cruz, history repeats itself. In his film, Broken Embraces, the Closing Night feature of the 2009 New York Film Festival, he cast Penelope Cruz as a call girl/ actress in a movie within the movie; with wigs and wardrobe, she morphs into Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Magnani, Audrey Hepburn. Oh, the envelope, please.