Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas) (2021)

Orchestral swells and tremulous strings help turn kitchen-table drama into grand operatic melodrama in Pedro Almodóvar's story of two new mothers sharing their experiences of childbirth, but the link between this melodrama and the broader politics Almodóvar bookends the movie with feels pretty tenuous - living without knowing, living with a secret, and correcting past wrongs seem to be the vague thematic bridge.

★★★☆☆

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Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos) (2009)

I think it was the laugh-out-loud melodrama I enjoyed most watching Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces, an overwrought carry-on about a blind film writer's affair with an actress, but everything else left me a little cold, including the rush to tie all the nonsense up sensibly in the end.

★★★☆☆

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Live Flesh (Carne Trémula) (1997)

Director Pedro Almodóvar turns Ruth Rendell's psychosexual thriller into a rambling soapy melodrama and turns Rendell's main character, the 38-year-old serial rapist Victor, into a more palatable naif whose inexperience-in-love and obsession with his 'first' results in an incident in which a policeman is shot and ends up a paraplegic.

★★★☆☆

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