Volver

2006’s “Volver”, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar.

Starring Penelope Cruise, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, and Antonio de la Torre.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (Cruz).

Taking place in Spain (subtitles alert!), we see Cruz’s character who works as a cleaner, sweeping leaves off her parent’s graves. We meet Cruz’s group of women friends, tight as a family, participating in certain cultural beliefs (appeasement of ghosts) and supporting one another through employment struggles, bouts with cancer, and disposing of worthless boyfriend’s dead bodies. Cruz catches her deadbeat boyfriend (de la Torre) trying to sleep with her daughter (Cobo) from an estranged marriage, and ends up a murderer. Instead of disposing of the body, she hides it in the closed restaurant’s freezer below her house. While seeking work, she ends up using the restaurant to feed a film crew and becomes a spontaneous caterer, while making sure she can raise her daughter and support her friends through difficult times.

Almodóvar takes the above melodramatic plot broad strokes and does something particularly special: he makes it believable and unpredictable. Centering his efforts are the remarkable talents of Cruz, who may have been robbed when she didn’t win her Best Actress nomination (she would have to wait until 2008 for "Vicki Cristina Barcelona"). She plays a spitfire, who has the character and grit of a pack mule, while looking like Penelope Cruz. All of the female characters are shown realistically, and instead of making the movie as a straight forward "murder and body disposal/discovery thriller", Almodóvar almost disregards that detail and focuses on a feminist statement about community and resilience, accompanied by equal parts realism and fantasy. I’m sad to say this my first Almodóvar feature: I look forward to further exploring his large and diverse filmography. While the film is at times flippantly disrespectful towards men (how does it feel fellas?) and clearly operates in magic realism, it’s also very colourful, funny, romantic, and very personal and unique. For Almodóvar fans and the non initiated, “Volver” is worth the go around.

4/5

Trailer: Click Here.