"Volver"

Almodóvar's latest movie, starring a dazzling Penélope Cruz and the wonderful Carmen Maura, celebrates the beauty of the place he had to escape.

By Stephanie Zacharek

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Yohana Cobo, Lola Dueñas, Carmen Maura and Penélope Cruz

Oct. 6, 2006 | Pedro Almodóvar's "Volver" -- the title means "to return" -- is inspired by the filmmaker's own memories of growing up in La Mancha, a place that to him seemed so hostile to sensuality, so small and mean, that even at age 8 he couldn't wait to escape it. Almodóvar did escape, to the urban vibrance and stimulation that many of us who grew up in small places yearn for, and most of his movies unfold in an urban landscape.

But going back to the familiar is often harder, and scarier, than exploring someplace new, and doing so seems to have energized and inspired Almodóvar: "Volver" -- which plays the New York Film Festival on Oct. 7, and will open in New York on Nov. 3, with other cities to follow -- is part noir-comedy, part ghost story, but it's mostly a potent reflection on how where we come from shapes us, in ways we can't understand until we've been away for a long, long while. Urban converts often talk about the small towns they came from as being "dead," as if they were places where nothing of value can grow -- conveniently forgetting that they themselves "grew" there. With "Volver," Almodóvar affirms, without idealization or misty nostalgia, the stubborn beauty of the place he had to escape (listen to a podcast of Almodóvar talking about the film here). The picture is so full of life that it seems less a product of the imagination than of the soil.

In "Volver," the central character -- the movie's life force, if you will -- is a ghost. She may be a real ghost or a metaphorical one, but the distinction is inconsequential. "Volver" is the story of a family of women, and at the root of this particular tree is a mother and grandmother, Irene (played by the wonderful Carmen Maura): She has two daughters, the tough, capable but somewhat insensitive Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and the more retreating, eccentric Sole (Lola Dueñas). At the beginning of the movie, we learn that Irene is dead: She was killed, with the girls' father, in a fire, quite a few years ago.

Sole lives alone, with no man in sight; she makes her living quietly as a hairdresser. Raimunda has a 14-year-old daughter, Paula (played by Yohana Cobo, a young actress whose face comes off as both intimidating and vulnerable), and a shiftless husband (Antonio de la Torre). Raimunda is the kind of woman who works herself to exhaustion taking care of her home, husband and kid, although her efforts only make her more beautiful, and stronger: This is, after all, an Almodóvar movie, a romantic, passionate picture informed as much by movie lore as by real life. If Almodóvar looked to Douglas Sirk in "All About My Mother" (although as a filmmaker, he's far wetter and more approachably rumpled than the crisp, buttoned-down Sirk), this time he's casting an eye toward Italian neorealism: "Volver" includes a clip from Luchino Visconti's "Bellissima," starring perhaps the most vital-looking actress of all time, Anna Magnani. And Raimunda's dramatic, earth-mother look -- all hasty, tousled up-do's and swooping eyeliner, none of which is enough to detract from her magnificent cleavage -- is a pure reference to Sophia Loren in some of the roles she played for Vittorio de Sica.

Raimunda and Sole lose their elderly Aunt Paula (played by Almodóvar veteran Chus Lampreave), their mother's sister, who still lives in the small town in which they grew up and who's one of their last links to their mother. Aunt Paula's death is the event that reunites Irene with her children (and grandchild), to reveal secrets and mend rifts -- and that's about as much of the nuts and bolts of the plot as I can safely give you. As with the best Almodóvar movies, "Volver" takes knotty twists and turns, channel-switching from comedy to tragedy with such buttery smoothness that you're rarely aware of the demarcations (if there are any). And again, as with Almodóvar's best movies, what happens is far less important than how it all happens, and how we're swept up in the moods and feelings of the characters.

Next page: Cruz, rescued from cuteness