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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I Miss You (Tu Me Manques) (2019)

This 2019 film about the staging of a theatre production tells a deeply personal story of loss and tells it with great effort and feeling, but heavy-handed theatrics, cliché and platitudes (lines like, "Art is the only thing that tells the truth", for instance) get in the way of the film having the impact the actual play had in Bolivia in 2015, apparently, when it got the notoriously homophobic country talking about gay suicide.

★★☆☆☆

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