“Parallel Mothers” steals up on the viewer. For most of its running time, Pedro Almodovar’s 22nd feature appears to be a classic melodrama of the director’s late period – less busy with side characters and subplots than most – about the fallout from a mix-up at a maternity hospital. But it becomes something very different indeed. Spain’s most celebrated living director started out as a flamboyant and occasionally flippant outsider, both charting and driving the ’movida Madrilena’ in a series of gleefully provocative indie films.

In his latest, he has become something very like the elder statesman of all that is anti-establishment in Spain – reminding a forgetful country of the historical anger and desire for retribution following the death of Franco which underlined the movida in the first place.

Lee Marshall, Screen International