Volver

Pedro Almodóvar has made a miniature sort of masterpiece with his latest film, “Volver.” From the first frames on the screen, we know that the movie is about, among many smaller things, death. It isn’t just a single story, neither is it a fractured set of scenarios. It is a segment in the lives of a handful of rather interesting people assembled in a movie that is sweet and sad in equal measures, but always presented with a that quirky brand of movie magic that is rarely seen outside the art house theaters.
The reason, perhaps, that wider audiences can see “Volver” is Penélope Cruz. She has received and Academy Award nominated in the category of Best Actress, and she definitely earns it, but more on that later.
Cruz plays Raimunda, a mother, wife, sister, and daughter in Madrid, Spain. In the beginning of the film we see her, her daughter, Paula, and her sister, Soledad, in a graveyard attempting to clean off the headstone of Raimunda’s mother, Abuela Irene. Raimunda’s mother was lost in a fire years before, and their relationship was a combination of a sad hurt mother and a bitter distant daughter. Raimunda’s relationship with Paula is a happy one, as is her relationship with Soledad.
The story follows the lives of the women in the beginning as they deal with the death of a loved one, and the return (the Spanish word “volver” means “to return” in English) of Abuela Irene who has come back from the dead to complete the things she left unfinished and to repair relationships.
There are a grand total of two men who have speaking roles, and one of them dies within the first twenty minutes. At first glance this movie has all the makings of a sadly cliché chic flick, complete with a salon, poignant mother/daughter scenes and terminal illness. This is no “Steel Magnolias” however; the salon is an illegal one, the mother in half of those touchy-feely scenes is an apparition of a dead woman, and in between these scenes our many heroines take things like murder and rape in strides.
“Volver” never trivializes the many harsh subject matters it deals with, that would be tasteless, something its characters simply wouldn’t allow. What Almodóvar does is blend in the harder elements of life into the lighter ones so that beyond the heartache we see the humor.
The scenes are often a blend of both everyday and extraordinary situations. Who hasn’t had to clean up a mess in the kitchen? Who’s had to tidy up a recently killed man before he permanently ruins the blue tile? Watching the extreme close ups of paper towels being laid down to soak up the blood, I heard the Bounty “quilted quicker picker upper” jungle run through my head and I laughed aloud, much to the chagrin of the elderly couple on my right.
I didn’t feel guilty laughing at the bright and colorful method of telling a bittersweet story, I think Almodóvar meant it to be humorous. That isn’t to imply that there are no sad scenes in the movie. There are a number of really touching moments that, regardless of gender, affect you more than you expect.
This movie was pretty remarkable because, in retrospect, it featured a wide range of emotions and situations, such a range that it doesn’t seem possible they could all fit smoothly together in the same film. The key is Penélope Cruz.
I’ll come right out and say that I really didn’t like Cruz as an actress before I saw this movie. I felt that, despite whatever talent she may or may not have had, she ended up in movies that were too ludicrous to be taken seriously leaving her floundering with a poor script and plot, often times serving merely as dolled up eye candy.
In “Volver” she turns a script and a plot into a character that is instantly endearing to the audience, and she gives, in my opinion, her best work to date as well as one of the most marvelous performances of the year. She doesn’t look like she hopped off the cover of “Cosmopolitan,” she looks honest to goodness real and imperfect. For some reason it was the most charming I’ve ever found her to be.
Cruz brings the two tones of the movie into a kind of harmony so that we can laugh at the humor, cry at the heartbreak, and look back on the whole affair fondly. She is both resplendent and humble, much like this film.
There are no extravagant camera angles, nor dazzling set pieces, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts because in the end we’ve seen something that, in its own modest way, is sweetly profound.

A-