Festival de Cannes Review: Volver (2006)

Prix du scénario – Pedro Almodóvar

Prix d’interprétation féminine – Chus Lampreave, Yohana Cobo, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Penélope Cruz

As vibrant, as powerful, as funny, as dramatic, as any film ever written and / or directed by the great Pedro Almodóvar. Volver is simply one of his best films, and that is really saying something. A film sweeping through various unresolved problems, an astonishingly real comradeship between women. And all weaved together in Almodóvar’s flourishing, surrealistic, naturalist style.

The Spanish filmmaker, never coy about his own personal background and emotional state, rallies his consumption with anxiety and drives it into a creativity like no other. “My innate restlessness, along with a galloping dissatisfaction, has generally acted as a stimulus.”

Volver very much depicts what Almodóvar has been renowned for celebrating – the story of strong women. And this is full to the brim with them. The main female cast – Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, Chus Lampreave – are so exceptional, the Cannes Film Festival Jury of 2006 honored them all with the Best Actress award that year.

The film’s journey kind of follows on, in some narrative strands, from Almodóvar’s 1995 film, The Flower of My Secret. The director was also proud to write a movie that would allow him to pay respects to a chapter of cinema that truly inspired him. Volver is in many ways a adoring love letter to the Italian neorealism era. And the likes of Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini would love this film.

More from Almodóvar: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Touching appropriately on the taboo themes of sexual abuse, of the reality of death, Volver earns much of its supremecy through juxtaposing both solidarity of the women, and their respective isolations. Almodóvar’s part tragedy, part melodrama, part comedy, is a motion picture that brings the magic of cinematic realism to the forefront.

The plot revolves around adult sisters, Raimunda and Sole, from a small village in La Mancha, now living in Madrid. Their parents were killed in a fire three years prior, which imparts a stronger sympathy for Aunt Paula. She has dementia, and seems to talk about the mother of Raimunda and Sole as though she were still with them. Then, the aunt’s neighbour, Agustina, talks about the ghost of the mother, Irene, she claims to have communicated with.

Later, Sole encounters a blast from the past, and is compelled to keep a lid on it for the time being. Meanwhile, Raimunda and her daughter, Paula, find themselves in a tight spot of their own. Keeping up appearances collide with the deepest secrets. A concoction only Pedro Almodóvar can handle with so much serious and farcical poise.

Almodóvar’s balance of discourse and mood is astonishing throughout. With all the elements never spilling over into pure tragedy or comedy. The acting ensemble clearly embrace working with the Spanish maestro. Many of the actresses were vocal about how fortunate an experience it was.

Much of the film’s aura (Volver means to come back in Spanish) mirrows Carmen Maura’s return to work with Almodovar. Having not worked together since 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervoud Breakdown. Nothing had changed, apparently.

More from Almodóvar: All About My Mother

Volver is rife with snippets of inch-perfect humor. The kind of chucklesome, often clandestine, moments perfectly fitting with capturing the inner-family village life Almodóvar knows all too well. The audacity of adults, surrounded by marijuana plants, rolling a joint in front of the teenage daughter. Or those sucking Spanish grandma kisses they give each other.

On the flip side, there’s elements of detesting humanity. The putrid husband of Raimunda taking a peek at the daughter’s crotch. Or later when he is still fuelled on sexual excitement, but Raimunda is too worried about her aunt to carnally entertain the pig, he begins masturbating. The transforming expression of pure disappointment and gawl from Raimunda is unforgettable.

And that brave face is devilishly accomplished from Penelope Cruz, in what might well be her greatest turn as an actress. Almodóvar had previous cast Cruz in Live Flesh and All About my Mother, and was smitten by her hypnotic charisma and curves. “One of the most spectacular cleavages in world cinema” the filmmaker declared.

Cruz brings a magnetic presence to Raimunda. In the vein of Sophia Loren or Claudia Cardinale. Visconti’s Bellissima with Anna Magnani is even showing on the TV at one point. All in keeping with Almodóvar’s homage.

More from Almodóvar: Talk to Her

The performances of these women is top drawer right across the board. Their visual dynamics and chemistry is so natural and captivating, every lady brings a unique charm and passion. Moments of pain and glory blend through these cherished lives, as effortless as the wind that glides through La Mancha.

A restless, panic-stricken teenage daughter, retelling a terrible event, for the mother to unflinchingly take the blame to protect the child – is one such devastatingly beautiful scene. Another, a mother weeps, what must be tears of both joy and sadness, in the realisation of an untouchable reunion. I could go on.

Spanish writer, Gustavo Martín Garzo, wrote to Pedro Almodóvar on seeing Volver, stating the “mixture of horror and happiness is wonderful. As if your characters could always find in the midst of hell, as Calvino wanted, that which isn’t hell, and they’ll always manage to make it last in their lives. That mixture, so typically yours, of candor and perverseness which makes the most dreadful things funny, and manages to find beauty and hope where it seems they can’t exist, seems to me one of the most marvelous things in your films.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Even a veteran like Almodóvar is moved by such heartfelt praise. Born in Calzada de Calatrava, at the heart of La Mancha, the filmmaker was literally and figuratively at home here. Building a rich canvas of a community faced with, but comfortable in the acceptance of, death.

Taking so much of his own upbringing, surrounded by nurturing women, Almodóvar lovingly breathes color into three generations of women. Volver is a master firing on all cylinders, flowering with emotional friction at every magnificent turn.