saavedra77 | Volver ("To Return")

Last night,

jmargethe and I went over to the Egyptian to see Pedro Almodovar's Volver, which I think might my favorite of his films, to date. Almodovar's matured so much as a storyteller since his early stuff in the '80s: his sensibility has always tended toward the tabloid, and while his movies have generally veered in directions that I found interesting, there was always a kind of adolescent desire to shock.

I've felt very differently about his last several films, though: All About My Mother, Talk To Her, and now Volver. All three of these have been stories about loss and memory, and they've been marked by a much deeper seriousness. Volver in particular also deploys a remarkable warmth and humor, considering the oftentimes dark subject matter.

Volver also marks a real milestone in Penelope Cruz' career: instead of playing her usual waif, she's strong, pragmatic, sensible woman secretly wrestling with some profound emotional challenges. Some reviews I've read have likened her persona in this film to the Sofia Loren of the '60s, and you can see why, from her long, unkempt wavy hair to her weary strength of character.

Readers of Beto Hernandez' Palomar stories might also pick up on a certain resemblance between Cruz' Raimunda and another fictional Latina earth mother: Hernandez' Luba, particularly as she's portrayed in the Heartbreak Soup and Poison River story cycles. Again, the forceful, no-nonsense personality, the fierce maternal protectiveness, the tamped-down sadness, the long, dark, unkempt wavy hair. Who knows? Maybe Almodovar is secretly a fan of Hernandez' work, or maybe they're both tapping some common cultural root--say, Sofia Loren, or something even more deep-seated ....?

Also, as I was telling

margethe, every cinematic venture into Almodovar's Iberia makes me want to travel and maybe even live there. I really, really need to start looking at ways of making that happen, one of these days ...