When Pedro Almodovar endorses a movie, it is worth a watch. “Cinco Lobitos” (2022) starts in the summer with thirty-five-year-old Amaia (Laia Costa), a first-time mother, who returns to her Madrid apartment after giving birth. Her partner, Javi (Mikel Bustamante) and parents, mother Begona (Susi Sanchez) and father Koldo (Ramon Barea), bustle around her and the baby, Ione, whom multiple actors played at one month, fourth months and one year. After her parents leave, she finds herself alone and overwhelmed, so she returns to the Basque coast to live with them in her childhood home and relate to her parents by transcending the parent child relationship and seeing them from the perspective of an adult woman, mother and lover.
It is easy to forget that these are characters, not real people dealing with the everyday realities of raising a newborn and other challenges of quotidian life. The ensemble cast is seamless with Costa convincingly playing an exasperated mother and career woman unable to continue her career and use her skills while caring for her baby. Costa really does seem as if she is in pain and suffering from lack of sleep. Javi is a lighting designer without parental leave so if he does not work, he does not earn money. They both have their own businesses, but no money is coming in. She needs to heal and breastfeed so he does not keep his promise to stay home as long as Amaia would like. Amaia has no other mommy friends to get advice or receive help from so she feels as if her errors are glaring and unique.
Her relief is palpable once she enters her parents’ car because she is no longer the lone caretaker and discovers that her missteps are minor. As the burden slides from Amaia’s shoulders on to her parents, first time feature writer and director Alauda Ruiz de Azua subtly shifts the focus on to Begona. In the Madrid scenes, though bickering, Koldo and Begona seemed equally capable of caring for Ione, but Koldo’s limitations become apparent, and Begona starts doing the heavy lifting, which leaves room for Amaia to refocus on her career and return to old patterns of teaming up with her dad to poke fun at old mom. Begona is no easygoing woman and considers complaining a hobby, so she acts out, which shakes Amaia out of complacency and reverting to the old family dynamic. Sanchez teaches a masterclass in how to be an unlikeable woman and still be relatable and likeable. Sanchez projects conflicting emotions with no need for dialogue to express the turmoil of wanting to express love but also inflict as much pain as she feels has been inflicted upon her. Begona insists on Amaia conforming to the rhythms of the house and accompanying her on her daily routine, which ends up serving as a de facto apprenticeship on being a significant other and mother.
de Azua’s gift is to constantly shift sympathies so moviegoers can go through the same process as Amaia and Begona in changing how they feel about the people around them. In one scene, Javi and Amaia have a whisper yell fight which ends with Amaia saying that she wants him to stay home. de Azua cuts to the next day with Javi packing. During the home sequences, there is a morning ritual of following Begona as she goes through the house wearing her purple robe, assessing the damage from the night before and setting things right. Koldo tells Amaia to go to sleep and seemingly seconds later, he wakes his daughter to feed Ione. It is these little moments conveyed through editing and abrupt transitions which show how quickly the women in the family lose confidence in people who seemed dependable and available to lean on. While Koldo and Javi love the women in their lives, their shortcomings are not supporting that emotion with objective action and shouldering the emotional and practical burden to reflect that love.
Amaia begins to relate to her mother’s frustrations and draw parallels between Koldo and Javi’s failings, which strains her relationship with both men. When a family member suddenly becomes ill, Amaia reassesses how she decides to live-not solely for herself, but as the family’s foundation. She accepts this downturn as a stage of life that she will not try to run away from. It was frustratingly cinematic when this person gets sick with a mysterious illness that leaves them looking wonderful and still fairly functional but is just debilitating enough to die in time for everyone to resume their lives and not reflect the more realistic erosion of a caretaker’s daily life without systematic societal support.
Here is where “Cinco Lobitos” gets tricky. Depiction should not be automatically equated with endorsement, but by the end of the film, you may find yourself wondering if you got suckered into upholding the patriarchy. No one changes except Amaia. It is a common story for countless women who become mothers and discover that notmuch has changed when it comes to gendered roles. At different points in the film, Amaia and Javi explain that if they keep rejecting assignments as independent contractors, they won’t get any in the future thus jeopardizing their financial futures and careers. In Javi’s case, it is presented as an objective fact, which Amaia understandably resents and feels betrayed and alone, but her contemplation of breaking up is depicted as a disproportionate reaction to his absence. In Amaia’s case, the expense of her education and ambition are minimized, and Begona dismisses Amaia’s desire to maintain her career, “It isn’t as if you were a brain surgeon.” When the movie ends, it is summer again. While it is a bittersweet, poignant denouement, it is still framed as a happy ending with Amaia walking in her mother’s footsteps and continuing her mother’s work. The warmth of the sunlight and the family dynamic reflects that Amaia is at peace with her decision to give in to gravity and continue her mother’s legacy of accepting others’ imperfections as a way of life and holding up the sky. There is some talk of a day care in the works, but it is not a condition of that acceptance. Her mother’s tutelage is a success. The student becomes the teacher, and it is easy to imagine her imparting these lessons to Ione in the future, which is actually what is terrifying about the story upon further reflection. The message is that men are too incompetent to care for families so put them to work and anything that a woman receives in return is enough even if it is not.
While hailed as an accurate portrait, de Azua still pulls punches and omits a lot about the practical realities of a woman. Amaia is not married to Javi so if something goes wrong, and she stops her career, she will have no financial backup. Child support rarely lines up with the needs of the child, and a court order does not guarantee compliance. She literally will not be able to live securely without him. Unlike her mother, she has no community to rely on and chooses to further isolate herself after not maintaining her relationship with her colleague and friend, Charlotte (Amber Shana Williams). So when you are watching this movie and are savoring the endless cycle of sacrifice by women to continue the human race, keep up that same energy when those same women are put on the proverbial ice floe of life when most relationships break up, and they still have to take care of those kids and themselves. Burdens do not get lighter with fewer resources. The movie puts the baby in the backseat in the final act as if it gets easier with other family complications, which is a dangerous fiction. The financial world of “Cinco Lobitos” does not add up. Two independent contractors have a two-floor flat in the middle of Madrid. Let’s hope that Madrid is as affordable as it appears on screen.
“Cinco Lobitos” is a moving film which lives up to the hype. de Azua is a filmmaker worthy of following so it may be worth checking out her sophomore film, a television film titled “Eres tu” (2023), which translates to “Are You,” without giving it a lot of thought. Still never forget that a movie can also be propaganda trying to convince you that an uneven set-up is a normal, beautiful part of life. Don’t fall for the okie doke.
