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VOLVER
Written & Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.
Produced by: Esther García.
Director of Photography: José Luis Alcaine.
Edited by: José Salcedo.
Music by: Alberto Iglesias.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Country of Origin: Spain. 111 min. Rated: R.
With: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo & Chus Lampreave.

After the dramatic powerhouses of Bad Education and Talk to Her, Volver is a return of the director of All About My Mother and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, with its desperate women in ridiculous heels, yellow dishwashing gloves, and horribly patterned cotton prints. Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) works several jobs to support her little Madrid household of a deadbeat husband and an emotionally distant daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo). After her neighbor closes his restaurant to take a short vacation and hands Raimunda the keys to show off the place to prospective buyers, she seizes the opportunity to keep it open and make some very necessary extra income. A slew of bizarre and bloody events converge, culminating in the appearance of her dead mother’s ghost, played by a hilariously haggard-looking Carmen Maura.

It’s a film with a body count and a lot of belly laughs. Seeing Maura as a quarrelsome ghost claiming to prefer living as a silent apparition with her daughters to a heavenly afterlife is as touching as it is absurdly funny. When not being stuffed into a car trunk or assisting her other daughter Sole (played by the sweet-faced Lola Dueñas of Talk To Her), disguised as an unintelligible Russian assistant in Sole’s illegal hair salon, Irene tries hard not to reveal too many of her long-held and explosive secrets when reconnecting with the daughters she had left behind.

With supporting roles played by Bianca Portillo and Chus Lampreave (also members of the outstanding stock company the director has assembled over the years), this is a melodramatic comedy from the Almodóvar old school. As Raimunda, Cruz is once again fabulous in a Spanish film. (It’s really only in her English-language films where you wince at her unconvincing portrayals.) She lends strength, humor, and glamour to a tough-as-nails woman who seems to be perpetually prepared for any disaster.

While no one can direct Cruz like Almodóvar, no one can light up his scenes like Carmen Maura and her bittersweet crooked smile. Her appearance at the film’s midpoint brings a delirious supernatural joy that the first half of Volver lacks. When she delivers a heartfelt monologue to Raimunda on a bench in front of a graffiti-splattered asphalt park near the closing reel, she elevates Volver from a good film to a great film with her character’s pitch-perfect expression of regret and dignity. Zachary Jones
October 12, 2006