Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar is long overdue to make his English-language debut, which we recently learned would be an adaptation of Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women. However, that film is being delayed because of, you guessed it, COVID-19, and so the filmmaker will first go back to his roots with a Madrid-set film about mothers, and starring his forever muse, Penelope Cruz.
According to Spanish site El Pais (via TheFilmStage), Almodovar will followup his acclaimed drama Pain & Glory with a new film titled Madres Paralelas, which translates to Parallel Mothers. In the works for nearly a decade, the film was specifically written for Cruz, who says it will explore “the feminine world of new mothers, of mothers who are raising children in the first and second year.” The story centers on two women in Madrid who give birth on the same day, and find their lives headed in parallel trajectories.
With Spain beginning to lift restrictions, the plan is for Almodovar to begin shooting early next year. Does that mean it could be ready for next year’s awards race? I’m sure that’s what he’s betting on.
With each episode of Warrior Nun’s 10-episode first season is titled after a bible verse that pretty much signifies the theme of the particular episode. For example, the first episode of Warrior Nun is titled “2 Corinthians 10:4,” which translates to “the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” Throughout the first season, Ava goes through various stages of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. At first, the freedom that comes from a new life, one where she is able to use her legs and arms, which she lost at a young age from a car accident. She gets to finally experience life for the first time, make friends, and gets drunk. Oh, but she can also see astral projections of demons infecting everyday people to do evil, much to her confusion. In addition to astral demons, there’s also a giant physical demon that wants the Halo and is murdering everyone in its path to get it.
Having Ava as the protagonist of Warrior Nun proves to be interesting. Ava is a tragic victim, who after becoming paralyzed is tortured in the Catholic foster care system by a sadistic nun and therefore ends up being a foul-mouthed atheist, who was now potentially in charge of leading the Church’s army against the forces of darkness. Naturally, she’s hesitant to get involved at all, but soon enough realizes that there are things bigger than her, which allows her to mature as a character through the 10 episodes of the season. Very similar to Daybreak (another Netflix comic adaptation), Ava often breaks the fourth wall via voiceover to allow the audience to know her innermost thoughts, which works effectively throughout the series. The only complaint about this is showrunner Simon Barry doesn’t consistently use this through the first season as there are moments where the voiceover goes away for episodes on end.
Although Alba Baptista is great as Ava, the real MVP of the show is Toya Turner as Shotgun Mary. The lone woman of color in the order, she doesn’t really fight as she even says, she doesn’t need to be skilled at combat when she has two shotguns. Shotgun Mary seems to have the most depth of all the characters and actress Toya Turner does a great job. Speaking of the fights, there aren’t as many as one would hope for, but when they do have fight scenes, we get to see exactly why these nuns are in charge of safeguarding humanity as they are expertly choreographed.
The season feels a little uneven as at first it seems to be an almost X-Men-like origin story for Ava as she learns to use her newfound powers, become the leader of the nuns, and will eventually fight a giant hellfire demon. However, Warrior Nun zigs instead of zags and the latter half of the show explores a conspiracy within the Catholic Church that is for more entertaining than just shooting spirit demons with Divinium weapons. The introduction of Cardinal Duretti (the always sinister Joaquim de Almeida) shows the shady politics of organized religion as well. The last two episodes completely take a left turn as it not only explores the origin of the original Warrior Nun, but challenges Ava (and the audience for that matter) on how we view our religious iconography to define what is good and what is evil and tells the audience that things, unfortunately, aren’t so black and white, but rather “messy.” The last 10 minutes of Warrior Nun has a twist old school M. Night Shyamalan would be proud of and almost dares Netflix to cancel it after a massive cliffhanger. Netflix please don’t cancel like you did Daybreak, V Wars, or October Faction: all supernatural genre shows that were canceled with cliffhangers. Warrior Nun absolutely works very well and needs a second season!
