Description
Spanish for "Coming Back,"
Volver is a return to the all-female format of
All About My Mother. Unlike Pedro Almod³var's previous two pictures, the story revolves around a group of women in Madrid and his native La Mancha. (The cast received a collective best actress award at Cannes.) Raimunda (a zaftig Pen©lope Cruz) is the engine powering this heartfelt, yet humorous vehicle. When husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) is murdered, Raimunda makes like Mildred Pierce to deflect attention away from daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo). After telling everyone the lout has left, she struggles to conceal his body. The other women in her life all have secrets of their own. Her sister, Sole (Lola Due±as), for instance, has taken in their mother, Irene (a sprightly Carmen Maura). Since Irene perished in a fire, is this person a ghost or simply a woman who looks like her? Then there's their childhood friend, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who is desperate to find out why her mother disappeared after the blaze. Was she responsible? Almod³var deftly blends the ghost story with the murder mystery in his tribute to the Italian neo-realist films of the 1950s. The resilient Raimunda is a throwback to the earthy heroines of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. The latter appears in Luchino Visconti's
Bellissima, which shows up on Sole's television one night (thus confirming the link). If Almod³var's 16th feature lacks the emotional punch of the more audacious
Talk to Her, it's less heavy-handed than
Bad Education and Cruz is a revelation.
--Kathleen C. Fennessy Please note this DVD may be Region 1 and will only play on the appropriate DVD players
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