Volver

The films of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar are 'œgetting harder to summarize and next-door to impossible to analyze,' said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. But with Volver, his oeuvre is getting only more voluptuously beautiful. The film is set in the director's hometown of La Mancha, a village on the outskirts of Madrid. The first moments capture women tending to graves in the village cemetery. Throughout Volver, matriarchs from the past show up as hardy influences in the lives of their daughters. When Irene (Carmen Maura) comes back from the dead as a flesh-and-blood woman, not a wispy spirit, her daughters Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas) seem little surprised to see their mother returning to their lives. Even more than Almodóvar's other movies, Volver brings physicality to the screen, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. When women kiss hello in this film, they give heavy, meaningful smacks. Cruz, more beautiful than ever in padding that plumps her cleavage and bottom, turns back into the siren she was before Hollywood got hold of her. Almodóvar is a lover of women, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times, and they love him back with radiant performances. Cruz gives her best work since All About My Mother, and Maura's 'œwarm good humor is a crucial element in the film's emotional design.'

Rating: R

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