Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
逝去的、经历的、新生的。在艳丽鲜红的戏剧装裱修饰下，仍能轻易感受到他在收敛锋芒后对伤痛个体愈发温柔的关怀体贴，以及一如既往Powerful的女性形象，一个广垠博爱的母性世界，那是人类可以超越生物学定义的情感连结，是对极右抬头的最好反击。作为疫情时期被创作出来的作品，它尽可能地提供了我们对周遭事物的直觉知感，洗褪了虚假奇情，代入眼前历史与政治景观的绝对“真实”：近似核酸检测的亲子鉴定，刺目的电子荧屏和无处不在现代化工具符号，这场关乎生存的战争从未结束。我们埋葬了亡者，我们必须仍去警醒，我们需要照顾并慰藉身边所爱之人。在他的世界中不存在虚无，因为它根本无从诞生，一切都是那么的原始、自然。对主题和环境如此统一契合而又不失力量的平行步调，也就只有世界上最伟大的情景剧作者能够做到——谢谢你，阿莫多瓦。
这个剧本在前半部分非常巧妙，两个女人都因为孩子而颠覆了自己的生活，后来又因为有一个特别有想象空间的抱错孩子的设定，再加上拍摄技巧等稍微有惊悚片的质感，以至于戏剧张力特别到位。这个妈妈会如何选择，是遵从道义还是欺瞒所有人一生。面对这种两难抉择，女主的表演也做到了应有的水平。其中还有第三位母亲，没有因为孩子放弃自己毕生的梦想，她的在场也是非常合时宜的。但是后半部分简直看得我瞳孔地震，怎么突然开始拍这么刺激的东西了，后来越拍越远，越拍越远，最后居然是一个文物出土式的结局。我感觉前后完全不是同一部片子，或许这是什么特殊的技法，但是我还没领略到。
《平行母親》阿莫多瓦在劇本上應該下了一些苦心，對歷史正義與親人真相的追尋和j角色（肥皂劇般）的生活在時間流逝中延續與疊合，對作者來說，面對過去和現在是同等重要的同一件事。電影以挖掘國家黑暗歷史的漫長與決心為背景，同時在說無論這些阿莫多瓦式人物人生如何地曲折與混亂，他們都無愧於心。
还阔以。挺打发时间滴。罗宾在电话里教芬尼挥拳，总有一天你要自己作战，就是今天，也为了没能逃出去的我。这友情真他妈的让人泪奔。哎。
印象最深的除了结尾，还有女主角Janis和Ana的一些对话，Ana纠结于吃醋和情爱，觉得Janis太关注乱葬坑和旧伤疤，Janis则说“看来你的家庭没有人跟你解释过这个国家的历史”，随后告知真相。类似对话在我们周围发生了太多太多。所以，影片看似有两条过度分裂的线，实际合一并行，一条告诉我们当下是什么，一条为我们探索历史是什么，它们就像DNA盘旋延伸，是在说我们的历史对当下的我们意味着什么。删掉了，掩埋了，历史和伤疤就不存在了？国家就能有未来了？阿莫多瓦说不，并收敛了少许他的风格。可惜这部电影今年没有收到它该有的关注和解读。
母亲/孩子的关系是阿莫多瓦电影中的交叉主题之一。这次他构建了一个紧张、凄美的情节剧，情节又被铭刻在历史背景中。电影最后突然升华为谈论过去而不是未来，谈论历史而不是角色，让一位单身母亲融合了私人、民族和家庭的宏观上来了。
6.5 太像同人作品，两条线没太大关联，全片浅焦。美术绝佳。
作为情节剧狗血拉满却没有半分悬念，你猜是啥就是啥。作为艺术电影没有一处印象深刻的调度，没有一句值得回味的台词。所有场景都广告片般整洁，软硬广植入几乎跟他善用的浓艳颜色一样戳眼。全片最有生活气息的空间是女主的电脑桌面。平行的不止母亲，更有挖骨寻根的历史创伤叙事。两条线笨拙的黏连方式及可信度，就像那个注定要挖出的拨浪鼓，果然以最醒目的方式，放在了埋得并不深这么多年村民却没发现的朽骨旁。多年不看阿莫多瓦，原来已是拍广告片、电视剧的水平。
故事一般，也就是三星。但，立意，我个人给五星。
喜欢。今年颁奖季里看了很多女主种子选手的电影（妮可Gaga劳模科曼暮光女），Penelope这部的成片最喜欢，演绎的也非常棒。完全值得奥提，配得上影后拿奖的 ~
想住进Janis的家里！配色构图都太太太好看了，阿莫多瓦就是信手拈来！两个主题稍微有点不太和谐，怕偶像骄傲扣一星吧！快拍下一部！
阿莫多瓦竟然带政治了！既是平行的母亲，也是平行的寻找、回归血缘的故事，同时交织在佩内洛普这个人身上，并在最后一幕从骨到肉、从死亡到初生的视觉溯源上产生了巨大的视觉冲击力。看似的狗血的，其实又在还有半个小时结束时就大胆地揭开谜底，可见醉翁之意已不在两个母亲本身。阿莫多瓦仍然是我们这个时代的情节剧大师，而现在更重要地，他在给自己找寻新的意义。
勉勉强强的片子，只有一处jump scare被吓到。这两年恐怖片都很烂，所以感觉还行。
单独看的话，错抱婴儿和内战创伤这两段戏都不算特别出彩，而且两者之间的嫁接也比较生硬和勉强。总之，Almodóvar的个人风格几乎无法辨识，看来这确实不是他擅长的题材啊。
嘴里喊着毒药
初看那张惊艳的海报真的以为主题是聚焦于女性朋友权益母职家庭相关的内容，结果是从个人悲痛上升到国家的黑历史的痛苦，虽然都是寻找与错失命运无常的伤痛，直面与新生，看得出想弄大格局，但是两个主题「个人与历史」的结合至少在这个故事里很生硬，搞得两个主题都没表现好，最离奇的是女主知道孩子可能被医院搞混抱错了第一时间竟然不是去找医院，而是默默忍住，这点非常站不住脚啊。
3.5。奇情和美術在阿莫多瓦的電影裡早已不新鮮了，比別人處理得輕巧對他來說不過是及格標準。倘若這一部的亮點在於以當下寫歷史，對歷史成因的深入探究顯然非其所長，或至少志不在此。
三星半。略有点狗血，但对女性的那种母性刻画细腻温柔，用对女性的书写来叩问历史、讲述“落叶归根”，即使两条线的融合不是很好。
安娜白发T造型比她长发好看太多了！关于母亲的线很喜欢，就是跟人类历史的线有点割裂。
我十分想和Penelope学做西班牙土豆饼
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