Parallel Mothers review – Almodóvar delivers Venice film festival a little bundle of joy

Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz open the festival with a boisterous, warm-bodied swapped-at-birth melodrama about two single women who meet in a maternity ward

The first day of the Venice film festival is an excitable, expectant affair. The staff wear medical masks, the cinemas have been sanitised and the guests mass at the door like anxious family members outside a maternity ward. Happily they are in good hands; Pedro Almodovar is the midwife. He delivers an opening night picture that is positively ringing with life.

Showcasing a sure-footed performance from Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers shapes up as a boisterous swapped-at-birth melodrama, full of mix-ups and moral quandaries, occasionally tilting towards farce. But first appearances are deceptive and the film belies its high-concept conceit. All newborns, we're told, carry the ghosts of the past in their genes - and so it is with Almodovar's latest, which is knotted and subversive; an autopsy of dark Spanish history dressed up as a bright baby shower. It's a turbulent movie. The ingredients don't always gel. But it is so generous of spirit that it would be churlish to complain. Most directors give so little. Almodovar, by contrast, offers an over-abundance of riches.