Penelope Cruz wins the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival for 'Parallel Mothers', by Pedro Almodóvar

Penelope Cruz with the Volpi Cup, today in Venice Domenico Stinellis / AP

The talent of Penelope Cruz has given birth to a prodigious result. And unique: she is the first Spanish interpreter to win the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice festival. After all, he offered the jury up to two reasons for presenting him with the award. He obtained it, today, Saturday, for his extraordinary performance in

, by Pedro Almodóvar. She herself assured that the role of Janis - a wounded but unshakable woman, who cares for a newborn daughter as she struggles to exhume her grandfather - was "perhaps the most difficult" of an impressive career. So much so that she is even capable of outdoing herself and overshadowing herself: her other performance that was seen at La Mostra would also have deserved an award. In

, by Argentines Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, gets into the shoes of a very peculiar film director and even manages to make the viewer forget the famous face behind the character.

Not for nothing, Cruz headed practically all the pools of the contest to gain recognition.

The Golden Lion, on the other hand, surprised the majority of the prognosis: it won

the crude film about the abortion of the French director of Lebanese origin Audrey Diwan.

More information

• Almodóvar and the wounds of war

• All of Almodóvar's mothers hug each other in Venice

"It is an honor. Here we are, celebrating the cinema. Thanks Pedro, this is 100% yours. Your impeccable work, your dedication are so hard to find these days. I adore you, ”Cruz said between English and Italian. The actress, who received an ovation, also dedicated the award to her family, her husband and actor, Javier Bardem, and their children, and the rest of the cast of

And he ended with a special thanks

To my mother, Encarna, the best teacher and friend; and my mother-in-law, Pilar Bardem ”. And he shared an intimate memory with the second, who died a few months ago. He said that, at the end of the last conversation between the two, Bardem told him: "I love you." And then he added two more words: "Volpi Cup." "It goes for the two of them and all the mothers," added Cruz.

The triumph in Venice increases, incidentally, speculation in the face of another award.

The American magazine

already placed her among the favorites for the next Oscar.

There is time, until next March 27.

And, in between, there are also the Goya, on February 12.

For now, it is not heresy to affirm that his performance is even more complex and successful than the one that precisely gave him the Hollywood statuette in 2009, by

The award, then, went to the best supporting performer.

In

On the other hand, Cruz dominates practically every shot. And it offers a masterclass in emotion and truth on screen. Neither excessive nor cold: it plunges feelings into an almost impossible middle ground, always on the surface. A complex, painful area, even for the interpreter herself, who recognizes that she lives her work and roles very intensely. But, perhaps for that reason, even more moving. The film mixes two stories: on the one hand, Janis and Ana (Milena Smit) meet in a hospital room, before their delivery. The first, a hardened and fright-proof woman, celebrates a miracle, when she was no longer expecting it; the other, very young, lives the wait with terror and doubts. Both are alone, but their existence will end up united by a series of circumstances. At the same time, while looking to the future, Janis does not forget the past:he works to start the exhumation of a mass grave in his town, where his grandfather and many others were executed in 1936. Perhaps the award will also serve to remember the second pillar of the film: historical memory.

The truth is that, after the Goya for

and the award for best actress at the Cannes festival, shared with the entire female cast of the same film, Cruz's collaboration with Almodóvar has resulted in another award. And it follows in the footsteps of Antonio Banderas, the protagonist of the filmmaker's previous film,

, and awarded for it at the French competition. Cruz also accesses an exclusive club that, for now, only she and her husband, the actor Javier Bardem, make up. They are the only Spanish performers to have won the Volpi Cup at La Mostra, the oldest film festival in the world. He, specifically, has two, for

and

One day, when he was just a teenager, Sorrentino lost everything. His parents, due to a domestic accident, and his youth. Soon after, he left Naples, went to Rome, and became director. He accumulated applause, awards, a personal style, a mixture of irony, excess and beauty, and even an Oscar for

And at last he felt ready to film that pain. No award will return to the filmmaker what fate took from him. But it

, his most intimate and restrained film, and the Silver Lion, Grand Prize of the La Mostra Jury, constitute a moving tribute to the family he said goodbye to too soon. So much so that the filmmaker was excited to collect the award. He remembered his family, the entire film crew and, of course, Diego Armando Maradona. And he shared: “On the day of my parents' funeral, the school principal sent only four classmates to represent the whole class. It made me feel awful. But it doesn't matter anymore because the whole class came today, it's you ”.

Before launching himself towards his most risky project, in addition, the filmmaker took off even the protection net: he resigned from several of the film labels that made him so famous.

is not obsessed with looking for beautiful shots, it also reduces the usual surrealism and focuses on a young man (Filippo Scotti, winner of the Marcello Mastroianni award for best revelation performer), instead of his gallery of men in decline. The soundtrack does not remain etched in the memory either, although perhaps the most characteristic of cinema, and of the director's way of being, remains: the union of the sublime and the earthly.