Starring: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Category: IIA (Spanish)
The title of Pedro Almodovar's new masterpiece, Volver, is Spanish for 'to return', and with the film's opening sequence the director has made his intentions clear about what he's going back to.
The camera moves fluidly across a windswept cemetery, where an army of plainly dressed matriarchs are shown scrubbing fervently the gravestones of the dear departed. It sums up what Almodovar seeks to celebrate with the film: the scorched, arid plains of his home province, La Mancha, and the vigour of strong, independent women who are charged with maintaining the land and its traditions.
Volver is, to paraphrase Almodovar's Oscar-winning film, all about mothers. Men are still present in the form of a hovering menace - leery, good-for-nothings whose feebleness and desires lead to death and domestic meltdown - but it's the women, whose solidarity contrasts with emotional frigidity of the men, who navigate the harsh geographical and social terrains in life.
