Parallel Mothers (soundtrack)

Parallel Mothers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack to the 2021 film Parallel Mothers directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film is scored by Alberto Iglesias, a recurrent collaborator of Almodóvar, and the soundtrack that accompanied two songs and 17 cues from Iglesias' score was released by Quartet Records on 8 October 2021 coinciding with the Spanish theatrical release and 30 December 2021 in the United States.

Development
Iglesias and Almodóvar collaborated for Parallel Mothers for the 13th time. Like their previous collaborations, Iglesias provided the score only after watching the final edit so that he could draw the musical ideas for the intense moments. At the crucial juncture, he came across how Cruz's character learns the truth about her baby which Iglesias described it as the soul of the film and he oriented the music to the suspense which gave him several voices for other sequences. He did not give two different themes for the characters instead followed a parallel structure, where the two themes would be one at the same time and syncs with the narration.

Much of the score was written for the string orchestra, where he used two different types—one being a string quintet, and the other, a 49-piece orchestra with strings, piano, woodwinds and harmonies, recorded at the AIR Studios in London—and built a separate musical language with the contrast. The score has a connection with the fandango, and also featured lullabies at some points, and suspense music that is akin to Bernard Herrmann's musical style.

Reception
A. O. Scott of The New York Times, Ian Freer of Empire and Justin Chang of Los Angeles Times described the score as "piercing", "striking" and "exquisitely moving". Nicholas Barber of IndieWire described it as "palpitating". Anthony Lane of The New Yorker said "the score, by Alberto Iglesias, could be that of a sad whodunnit". Stephanie Bunbury of Deadline Hollywood wrote "A truly inspired emotional roller-coaster of a score by Alberto Iglesias runs through almost the entire film that would give any Bette Davis movie a run for its melodramatic money." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it as a "Hitchcockian score" that is "lush and enveloping even by the composer’s distinguished standards".