Volver
Length: Single
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: R
Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/volver/
Release Date: 2007-01-18
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Screenwriter: Pedro Almodovar
Music Score: Alberto Iglesias
WorkNameSort: Volver
Our Rating: 4.00
Pedro Almodóvar’s latest masterwork, Volver, is about a family of women, ghosts, cancer and a dead husband hidden with Hitchcockian panache in a restaurant freezer. But, hey, loose, outrageous plots have always just been Almodóvar’s way into the souls of his intricately wrought, powerful female characters. When Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) finds her daughter Paula crying in the street, she’s led home to the body of her husband, a knife in his back that Paula put there after he tried to rape her. Meanwhile, Raimunda’s sister, Sole, has to contend with the death of their aunt and the sudden appearance of their mother Carmen’s ghost. There’s also a good friend of the family dying from cancer who wants to know where her hippie mother disappeared to right around the same time Carmen died. The unpredictable way all these stories begin to weave together makes it impossible to know where Volver is going until the final act. But it’s the exploration of the ties that bind mothers to daughters that offers the real substance. That, and how many times Almodóvar can deliver overhead shots of Cruz’s cleavage spilling out of her tops.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.