in another strand, penelope cruz�*s character is trying to excavate a mass grave in her hometown from the civil war, so there are two stories. parallel mothers, parallel stories, personal and political, which sounds like a really fascinating combination. and if you think of the films of guillermo del toro, like the devil's backbone or pan's labyrinth, he's managed to do exactly that with the spanish civil war. here's the thing with this, it's beautifully designed, beautifully played — a very well—written script with great performances, wonderful score. and it sounds like a perfect match. the problem for me is that it's not so much parallel stories, it's tangential stories. you have the spanish civil war story, which kind of appears and then gets sidelined. you have the personal story, which is full of melodramatic contrivance which you're kind of meant to buy into because, hey, it serves the story. and then we move back to the spanish civil war