Pedro Almodóvar (2006)
Almodóvar’s comedy of life and death secrets is fluent and pleasant but his relaxed mastery makes this a less exciting film than many of his earlier ones, in which the director’s obsessions seemed to generate the story – and the story, however bizarre and improbable, seemed true. (I saw Volver a week after I’d seen Matador for the first time.) The opening (titles) sequence in the local cemetery – with women of the Spanish village (where most of the action takes place) battling the wind as they clean the gravestones – is full of promise but the plot of Volver comes to seem relatively preconceived and its working out conventionally proficient. (A few scenes seem to go on too long.) There are two main stories: how Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) deals with the aftermath of her slob husband’s murder at the hands of their own daughter; how her sister Sole (Lola Dueñas) deals with the return from the dead of their mother (Carmen Maura). The stories, engaging though they are, neatly parallel: there’s disappointingly little friction between them.
The subversive wit that often seemed the motor of Almodóvar’s work, although it’s often present, now feels like decoration. It’s that earlier work that helps you to accept the story of the revenant mother as if she were a ghost. (This makes for a very funny sequence when she complains that she’s tired and looks a mess.) But the denouement, less incredible and less convincing, feels anti-climactic. Penélope Cruz is ripely beautiful – in her physical prime and relishing the opportunity given to her here as an actress. (Phrases like ‘fully rounded’ and ‘red blooded’ have double meanings in this performance.) At one level, Cruz’s stunning looks don’t seem to fit the initially downtrodden character she plays but they lift the film: Almodóvar glories in the actress being so naturally and completely at home in her film star body.
‘Volver’ (Spanish for ‘to go back’) is the name of a song that Raimunda sings – at the restaurant where she hides the corpse and where she makes her living after her husband is dead. This film about ‘coming back’ sees the welcome return to an Almodóvar cast not only of Cruz and Carmen Maura but also of Chus Lampreave (in a single, memorable scene). Maura and Lampreave may be filling insubstantial roles here but their presence is fortified by association with their earlier Almodóvar incarnations. The large, witty Maria Isabel Díaz gives an enjoyable performance as one of Raimunda’s variously employed friends. The male roles are strikingly minor. The movement and look of the film are lovely – Almodóvar’s use of a more nuanced palette doesn’t seem like a loss of energy. The score by Alberto Iglesias is sensitive and sensitively used.
30 August 2006
