Movies
Bless me, readers, for
I have sinned. It’s been one week since my last confession, and this is
something I’m not particularly proud of: I’ve never really understood all the
hype surrounding Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodรณvar.
The free world gets positively giddy when a new Almodรณvar
film appears on the horizon, and I’ve always played along, secretly knowing
there was something I wasn’t grasping that everyone else did. Then once I would
finally witness this art, I waited for an epiphany that never came. Almodรณvar’s latest is called Volver,
and it’s yet another of his love letters to the fierce camaraderie of women.
This time, however, I think I get it.
Penรฉlope
Cruz teams up with Almodรณvar for a third go-round
(following 1997’s Live Flesh and
1999’s All About My Mother) to play Raimunda, a working-class wife and mother in Madrid with a
14-year-old daughter and a husband whose wildly improper desires are
telegraphed to us upon his introduction. Raimunda’s
life then changes in a very Mildred
Pierce/Lana Turner way, though corpse disposal becomes the least of her
worries as a film crew shows up in need of a caterer right around the time
sweet Aunt Paula, the woman who raised her, passes away back in their little
village. Oh, and Raimunda’s late mother Irene (Carmen
Maura, Almodรณvar’s leading lady from 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)
has apparently returned from the dead to help Raimunda’s
sister Sole (adorable Lola Dueรฑas) with her illegal
hair salon.
Almodรณvar
finds a way to channel what probably sounds like contrived whimsy into a
moving, Douglas Sirk-esque look at an interlaced
group of women who greet each other with oodles of noisy kisses, traffic in
superstition, outlive their men, and take care of those who took care of them.
A possible romance between Raimunda and the film crew
liaison never materializes the way it would in any
other movie, and that’s Almodรณvar: the men of the Volver are an
afterthought, sheer plot devices to illustrate the complicated bonds between
mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends.
Also Almodรณvar are Volver‘s lush visuals, whether he’s showcasing the primary
colors of Madrid,
the earth tones of a Spanish village, paper towels blossoming with blood, or
exquisite Mediterranean women of all ages and sizes. There’s a great overhead
shot of Raimunda frantically rinsing off a
viscera-covered knife, but the eye is automatically drawn to Raimunda’s juicy curves, which would later prompt a
question that only a mother could ask: “Have you always had such a big chest?”
The writer in Almodรณvar has an ear for the ladies,
the candid way in which women who are familiar with
each other converse: lovingly antagonistic, vulnerably blunt, and far more
crude than most men know… or want to know.
Hollywood
understandably tried to steal Penรฉlope Cruz a while
ago (her stateside film debut was in Stephen Frears’
underrated 1998 Western The Hi-Lo Country)
but it hasn’t done her any favors, unable to see beyond her beauty and casting
her as the exotic bombshell nearly every time out (a notable exception: the
late Ted Demme’s 2001 drug flick Blow). Acting in her native tongue — and under the guidance of a
director who clearly brings out the best in her — Cruz gives her finest
performance to date as Raimunda, intensely loyal, kinda bitchy, and surprisingly funny. Watch for the scene
in which Cruz tearfully belts out a tune taught to her by her mother at the
film crew’s wrap party; it’s one of the most heartbreaking interludes of the
season. Cruz already received a Golden Globe nomination for her role, and she
can probably count on her first Oscar nod as well.
The rest of Almodรณvar’sgyno-centric ensemble
also shines — the Best Actress prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival went
to Volver‘s
entire cast — especially Lola Dueรฑas as Raimunda’s timid sister, overcoming her fear of the dead to
reconnect with her much-missed mother. And Carmen Maura, all frowzy grey hair
and housecoats, graciously cedes the Almodรณvar
spotlight to Cruz but goes down swinging with her portrayal of an imperfect
woman trying to right the wrongs against her loved ones. Is she really a ghost?
I’m not telling. I just got into this club and I’m not ready to be kicked out.
Volver (R), written and directed by Pedro Almodรณvar, opens
Friday, January 19, at Little Theatres.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.
