Volver (2006) 9/10
Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas) travel from Madrid to the village where they grew up to tend their mother’s grave and look after their aging and addled Aunt Paula. Neighbors believe that the ghost of the women’s mother (Carmen Maura) has been caring for Aunt Paula. When Paula dies, Sole discovers her mother’s ghost has returned with her to Madrid following the funeral. Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
A lot of times a “women’s movie” is concerned more with men than with women. The women solve their problems by forming romances or by ending bad relationships. Volver is a different animal. While it is true that a relationship ends in this movie, and that a family’s father has had a profound influence on a character, the relationships in this movie, the failures, successes, loves, losses, and friendships, all involve women.
Almodóvar’s script cares about how sisters care for each other. He is attentive to Raimunda’s relationship with her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo; a wonderful young actress) and how Paula connects with her Aunt Sole. The interconnected lives; the adult women and their aunt and mother, and how that is reflected and echoed in the next generation, are what’s important. No one’s problems are solved by getting laid; the only problems that are solved get there by women sitting down and telling each other the truth.
And the truth, it turns out, is colorful, fanciful, funny, heartbreaking, and delightful. Raimunda and her family drama don’t live in isolation. These people have helpful and interested neighbors and friends in an extended network. It’s kind of delightful, because people in movies and on TV generally have fewer relationships and know fewer people than real life provides. Almodóvar, though, cares about human interconnection and the ways in which we live among others, and occupy our streets and towns.
Cruz, in an Oscar-nominated performance, is stunning. The role takes her from vulnerability to strength, through sorrow, humor, anger, love, and forgiveness. Through it all she is gorgeous (of course), self-possessed, and completely complicated. I found her utterly loveable. It was pretty clear that her sister, daughter, and mother thought of her as a bitch, and yet she is utterly sympathetic. Plus, she’s got maybe the most watchable eyes in cinema.
There are times when I haven’t particularly appreciated Almodóvar’s bizarre sense of humor, but Volver is a movie that made me laugh out loud, cry, and care very much how it ended. It made me root for the characters and hope for their future. It tells its story with melodrama, with bizarre twists and turns, with murder and cancer and ghosts and illegal hair salons. The end is definitely more than the sum of its parts, and that’s saying something.
