A Return Cruz
Volver
Dir Pedro Almodóvar. Starring Penélope Cruz
A lot of Spaniards hate Pedro Almodóvar’s films. The kitsch melodrama and sexual frankness proves just too much to stomach. With Volver, however, you might say the director has made a small revolution. The title means ‘to return’, and refers to not only the return of the protagonist to her hometown within the film’s narrative, but also to the director’s return to his homeland. Thus one of the principal flavours that colours the film is its sheer Castilianness.
The rich colours, textures, music are perfectly blended by the director into a universally palatable tableau. As with all his films, however, stereotype is avoided by the originality of the plot, which weaves social documentary with twists which split the seams of realism. All this gives the characters a perfect space in which to develop. Carmen Maura, Penélope Cruz and Yoana Cobo play three generations of women, bedraggled and indifferent to the ebbs and flows of life.
When Cruz’s Raimunda is forced to return to reassess the past as it is cast in a new light by a ghostly reappearance, the repetition of destiny sees her own daughter undergo a trauma which will bind her more closely than ever with her mother. Described by Almodóvar as a “domestic Indiana Jones” the film goes back to a stark documentation of the hardships endured by women in small town Spain.
In graveyards, illegal hair salons, whitewashed houses and muddy streets, the film uncovers old rocks and also reveals sparkling news secrets and sensations for characters and audiences alike.
8th Jun 2006