Milena Smit, center, and Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers (Iglesias Más/Sony Pictures Classics)

At 72, Pedro Almodóvar is becoming contemplative. He has followed up one of his best films, Pain and Glory, about the pains of aging, the weight of personal history, and the salvation of art, with Parallel Mothers, which juxtaposes the relationship between two new single mothers with a reckoning with Spain’s dark Fascist past. Essentially, we have two very different films crammed together, connected thematically. Unfortunately, it seems Almodóvar is more invested in one of them.

Janis (Penélope Cruz), a successful photographer, has an affair with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a forensic anthropologist who is helping her locate a mass grave in her village that contains the body of her grandfather, killed in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Eventually, Janis becomes pregnant. Arturo, whose wife is undergoing chemotherapy, doesn’t want her to keep the baby. Janis, in her late thirties, decides to have it anyway and raise the child on her own, and they end the relationship

In the hospital, Janis bonds with her roommate, Ana (Milena Smit), a 17-year-old, while they both wait for their baby girls, who are under observation, to be returned to them. When they part, they exchange phone numbers and promise to stay in touch. A few months later, Arturo comes to see Janis’s baby for the first time and, based on the baby girl’s looks, declares that he doesn’t think the baby is his. Meanwhile, Ana and her baby are living with Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), Ana’s distant mom, who for 20 some years has been attempting to break into the acting business with limited success. However, her Ana’s baby arrives as Teresa’s career is turning a corner, so Teresa takes off on a national tour of a play, leaving Ana on her own. Eventually, Ana and Janis reunite when Ana is working at a café near Janis’s apartment. Janis, still feeling a connection with Ana, invites her to move with her.

Although it may not be apparent in the spoiler-free synopsis above, this is Almodóvar in full melodrama mode. His trademark humor is all but absent. Though we are meant to take the circumstances seriously, the plot machinations take on a fantastical turn. In great melodramas, and frankly, decent films, characters react not just based on their circumstances but on their history and experiences. That is not the case here.

It seems the writer/director has posited his three main female characters as symbols, say, Past, Present, and Future. Janice is someone who is cognizant of Spain’s past and wants to remember it in the most clearsighted way. Ana is the Future, and she has no idea of the horrors of Franco’s regime, so Janice feels the need to school her, which she does in the one scene where she even approaches anger. Then there is Teresa, Ana’s mom, who is the Present, apolitical, self-involved, and materialistic. She stars in the play Doña Rosita the Spinster by Federico García Lorca, who the Fascists killed, with likely no awareness of that fact. She regrets her neglectful behavior toward her daughter but that does not mean she is going to change in any way. She soldiers on in her career.

Janis, though, is a blank slate. There is not too much we know about her, and she is simply bland. How she responds to the conflict inherent in the script is less about who she is and more about Almodóvar’s need for her to respond to a particular plot twist. Cruz acts her heart out, which is always a majestic thing to see. Still, Janis isn’t compelling or reflective of a complex person. Smit fares better as Ana, whose backstory is complex and interesting in comparison, giving Smit a lot to play with, and she absolutely chows down on the role. On the other hand, Almodóvar hasn’t made a character out of Janis beyond a symbol, to function as a plot device. If Penélope Cruz cannot find the heart of a character, then it is likely the character has no heart.

The past, though, fascinates Almodóvar: the mass grave mentioned earlier, and it is not a spoiler to say it is found. Here Janis and Arturo return to Janis’s hometown to interview the aged, whose family members were taken away and shot. This is the heart of the film, Almodóvar’s outrage over what happened and his fear the past will be forgotten.

The parallels and themes between the two stories are well-defined: the importance of lineage, the families we come from and the ones we create, and the necessity to be clear-eyed about the past—one’s own and one’s nation. But it is also clear that Almodóvar uses Janis and Ana’s story as an on-ramp to what he really wants to examine, yet most of the movie centers on a hoary plot device, which does a disservice to them and us.