Deborah Lipp

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.

The Last King of Scotland (2006) 8/10
Young Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), seeking adventure, decides to work in Uganda in 1971, arriving just as Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) takes power. Through a chance meeting, he is invited to become Amin’s personal physician, and eventually becomes deeply involved in Amin’s inner circle.

Late in the movie, a character urges Garrigan to return to Europe and tell the story of what’s happening in Uganda. “People will listen to you,” he says bitterly, “You’re white.”

The character is, of course, pointing to the “othering” of Africa. It is full of black people, and so white people in Europe and North America pay little attention, no matter how severe the problems are. This certainly isn’t confined to the 1970s—think of how few people in the U.S. knew about Darfur until quite recently. Yet how can such a line of dialogue be allowed to stand in a movie that does exactly what it claims to be bitter and weary over? The Last King of Scotland takes the compelling story of the Presidency of Idi Amin Dada, and tells it through the lens of a fictional white person.

(Historical notes: This IMDb post suggests that Garrigan is a composite of three historical characters; Bob Astles, Mbalu-Mukasa, and an unnamed Scottish doctor, as well as the then-Minister of Health. Wikipedia, on the other hand, refers to Garrigan as a fictionalized Astles.)

The movie cannot overcome this conundrum. It wants to tell the white European version of the story, while criticizing that there is a white European version. Further, Garrigan is fundamentally ignorant of what’s going on around him. He wants to see the world, to philander, and to get laid. Which is fine, if that’s the way you’re going to draw the character, but it’s also a limited point of view. The audience isn’t told exactly what Amin is doing until Garrigan is told, and in this case (unlike in most movies), the audience is actually more ignorant. Garrigan is asked “Do you know what’s going on in this country?” and replies “Some of it,” but we know none of it (except what we may be bringing to the table apart from the film). Amin’s crimes against his people are told all in a rush, a whoosh of information and atrocities meant to shock without really informing.

Is Garrigan a symbolic character? Does he represent “Europe” or “the whites” or some such concept? Maybe, but the script doesn’t really seem smart enough to have thought it through that far.

As Amin, Forest Whitaker is hypnotic and fascinating. He is like a toddler walking around with a loaded gun, so damn friendly, so damn scary. McAvoy also does a great job in a demanding role.

By the way, this movie is a testament to the need to overhaul the Oscar nomination process. McAvoy is a textbook lead; the movie is told entirely through his character’s eyes. Whitaker is a textbook supporting actor, he has a strong presence in the movie, but his primary role is to have an effect on McAvoy. Yet Whitaker won Best Actor, not Best Supporting, and McAvoy was overlooked entirely.