Actress Penélope Cruz received the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Montecito Award at the downtown Arlington Theatre on Tuesday night, honoring her recent performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers,” which earned her an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category.
She has already received a Best Actress Award at the Venice International Film Festival for the role.
“In the most complex role written by the master Almódovar, Penélope Cruz delivers the best performance of her career and a master class in calibration and detailed acting,” said SBIFF’s Executive Director Roger Durling. “Her role in “Parallel Mothers” represents the best acting by anyone, male or female, this year.”
In “Parallel Mothers,” two women, Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), meet in a hospital room where they are both going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident.
Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant, but Ana, an adolescent, is scared and traumatized.
Janis tries to encourage Ana while they move dazed along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange create a profound link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.
The film represents Cruz’s seventh collaboration with Almodóvar, whom she worked with in “Live Flesh” (1997), “All About My Mother” (1999), “Volver” (2006), “Broken Embraces” (2009), “I’m So Excited!” (2013), and “Pain and Glory” (2019).
She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2008 for her performance in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” She is the first and only Spanish actress to be nominated for and to win an Academy Award.
“I feel very grateful that I can make a living out of cinema, but I also torture myself,” Cruz said. “What I feel is that as an actor, I am always starting from zero, so I never get to a place where I can feel too comfortable. I have the same excitement about acting as I had when I was 4 years old playing with neighbors.”
Cruz said she knew from a very young age that she wanted to be an actor. Her parents signed her up for classical ballet classes, and by the time she was 6, Cruz said she asked the teacher if she could play the role of Carmen.
Soon after, her parents got her a Betamax machine, and that’s where she discovered actors such as Meryl Street, Billy Wilder, and Al Pacino. She also discovered Pedro Almodóvar after watching “Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down,” and this was a decisive moment in her life.
She became intent on trying to be cast in one of his films, and admitted to going to theaters or bars where she suspected Almodovar would be. They would eventually meet, and he would create his first role for her in “Live Flesh,” where she delivered a baby on a bus, assisted by Pilar Bardem, who would years later become her mother-in-law.
The Montecito Award is named after one of the most beautiful areas in Santa Barbara. Past recipients include Amanda Seyfried, Lupita Nyong’o, Melissa McCarthy, Saoirse Ronan, Isabelle Huppert, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, Julianne Moore, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts and by coincidence, Javier Bardem, Cruz’s husband.
Sophia Loren’s son, director/producer Edoardo Ponti, bestowed Cruz with the award.
“All my life I’ve witnessed many actresses be compared with my mother, but always for the wrong reasons,” he said. “What makes Sophia, Sophia is not a set of measurements, but a set of values; values of empathy, sincerity, and humility and the body part that made her the bygone that she is, is her heart.
“Every time I see Penelope in a movie I think of my mother, as Penelope shares the same combination of authenticity, passion and sensitivity with humor and grace.”
Sophia Loren made an appearance on screen, congratulating her, “sister, daughter and dear friend.”
In her acceptance, Cruz said, “Sophia Loren means so much to me because I grew up admiring her, and then was lucky enough to become her friend. I will treasure this for the rest of my life.”
Cruz also thanked Almodóvar for “pushing her, for his trust, for imagining me doing things I cannot even imagine myself doing, and that is the best thing a director can give you.”
In closing, Cruz noted that it was International Women’s Day, and said she shares her award with all of the wonderful mothers who are facing unbearable challenges and horrors in Ukraine.
The 37th Santa Barbara International Film Festival, sponsored by UGG, continues through Saturday, with film screenings and special celebrity tributes or panels occurring each day. More information on the festival’s lineup can be found here, as well as on its digital program guide.
