Written by: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo
Rating: [4.5/5]
No one knows how to tell stories about mothers and the love they have for their daughters quite like Pedro Almodóvar. A filmmaker who thrives in displaying the passion in his characters in the throws of the enthralling stories he builds out for them with Volver being no different. In this film, he pieces together such treacherous threads and binds them together purely through the power of love in a tale filled with abuse, ghosts, and love filled to the brim in honor of women.
Living in the Madrid suburbs, Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) cares for her daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo). When she sees her husband trying to sexually assault Paula, she kills him and tries to find a way to get rid of his body as discreetly as possible as she picks up a new catering gig. While this all goes along, it appears Raimunda’s mother has gone around town talking to different individuals in her life, which does not make much sense considering she died in a fire 3 years ago.
Operating on both spiritual and literal levels, Volver centers solely on the relationship between mothers and daughters, which carry a specific bond that carries an immense amount of power. A bond that causes mothers to protect in ferocious ways, especially when they see a similar cycle they have experienced in their past. A generational cycle of abuse and pain that someone eventually needs to bring to an end, which Raimunda seeks to do in this story. The more we learn about her and her journey only further peels back the layers of something incredibly impactful and in lesser hands would not land in the same way.
Raimunda’s journey begins with something traumatic, but as we learn throughout the film, her life comes filled with it as it shades nearly every relationship she has on a familial level. A type of pain that would make anyone go insane with the grief she feels for others but also herself. It makes her constant perseverance so incredibly inspirational as she manages to put on a smile when she has so much pain in her soul. It makes those moments where she finally lets out feelings she has kept pent up all the more powerful and outright earned. Every bit of emotion she experiences and the film seeks to elicit as a whole feels incredibly lived in. Something only Pedro Almodóvar could accomplish when looking at the turns the feature goes into. Not only does he direct the hell out of this movie, but his screenplay in collaboration with the actors makes each of these moments feel potent none of it feels cheap in the slightest. Even when it goes for those emotionally charged and heightened moments, none of it feels unearned, which speaks to the incredible screenplay put together here.
On top of Raimunda’s trials and tribulations, this feature also has her mother’s ghost Irene (Carmen Maura) interacting with others. We, at least, believe her to be a ghost as the film establishes she died in a fire three years ago but the way she gets presented sure makes her look like a mortal walking on Earth. We see all of these interactions Irene has with other characters, but none with Raimunda for the majority of the film to a purposeful degree. Whether she truly exists as a spirit from the other side who’s back on Earth to communicate with her loved ones gets confirmed later on, but the power it has on the narrative as a whole well and truly punctuates exactly what the film wants to evoke to its audience and does so in such an emphatic manner.
Shepherding this brilliant film we have quite the duo of actors in Penélope Cruz and Carmen Maura who deliver stellar performances. Maura steps into a much more dramatic role from her other prominent role in Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and the way she shifts gears here has her deliver such exceptional work. Operating as a ghost but perhaps not makes it a tricky character to portray and she delivers on all of her emphatic moments throughout the feature. She pairs well with Penélope Cruz who never mails it in when working with Almodóvar. One could argue the work she does as Raimunda represents her very best work as an actor and I would not necessarily disagree with that statement. She brings such passion to this role to capture the rage, pain, and sadness of this character along with the way she tries to cover it all up with a smile. It’s breathtaking work that sticks with you after it all concludes.
No film makes you feel the unending love of women for women than we do in Volver. A film titled with the idea of returning, which can be seen in the spiritual, emotional, and literal realm making for something so emotionally impactful. The reveals of the film shed light on something that becomes more horrific as we continue down this rabbit hole but it also only further endears us to these characters as we embrace them through all they have gone through. No film feels as satisfying and cathartic as this one does when we reach the end, which proves this sits firmly as one of Pedro Almodóvar’s finest works from top to bottom. A special film and one that completely wears its heart on its sleeve.
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