There aren’t many filmmakers living today who are as consistent as Pedro Almodóvar , who has released at least one film hailed as a masterpiece within every decade since the 1980s. Although he was praised for his recent work on the melodrama The Room Next Door and the western short film Strange Way of Life , Almodóvar made his masterpiece of the 2020s with the psychological drama Parallel Mothers , which reunited him with his frequent star Penélope Cruz . Almodóvar and Cruz have worked together on All About My Mother, Volver, Pain & Glory, Broken Embraces, Live Flesh, and I’m So Excited , and have developed a creative partnership similar to that of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese , or Bong Joon Ho and Song Kang-ho .
Almodóvar has such a cons