Film Reviews

Volver

• Rating:
• Director: Pedro Almodovar.
• Starring: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blano Portillo.
• Details: Spain / 120mins (15A).

Flip a coin. Heads says Pedro Almodovar makes important films that are a unique and quirky insight to the lives of real women; tails says he makes boring films that pretend to be intellectual and are about a bunch of superficial women who have nothing to say. Four times out of five, the coin will come down on its edge and the fifth time it doesn't come down at all. Volver (come back) sees Almodovar in similar territory. The 'story' follows Raimunda (Cruz) who lives in a working class area of Madrid with her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) and her no-good husband Paco (Antonio De La Torre).Her sister Sole (Duenas) runs a clandestine salon for women in the area and both look out for their aging aunt in their spare time. When Paula stabs her father to death in the kitchen, Raimunda hides the body in the fridge of a local restaurant, which she runs for a friend. Then their dead mother, who died years ago in a fire, returns to try and put right what went she did wrong when she was alive. Volver's dialogue-driven plot delights in the witty one-liners it spits out and Cruz's (who has never looked better) 'tell it like it is' attitude is a standout. It also marvels in the way it makes strange supernatural situations seem ordinary and everyday. Unfortunately, that's where the good points end and the nonsense begins. The meandering plot never goes anywhere; interesting storylines are brought up and then totally ignored; the characters are too flippant to be engaging and it all seems a little pointless by the end. In one scene, Almodovar gives us a high angle shot of Cruz's cleavage (which is given constant attention throughout) as she cleans a bloody kitchen knife. Almodovar hopes that this shows both the female sexuality while the phallic blade is a metaphor for the harmful men that sexuality attracts. That is one way of looking at it but another way it just looks like a first time student filmmaker trying to hard to be artistic. Other reviews will state that Volver is a comment on strong mothers, quintessential qualities of womanhood and a homage to Italian Neo-realism. All that may be true but it still doesn't make for exciting cinema.

Review by Gavin Burke