Volver is a story of a family, especially the variable and malleable relationships between the women of that family. The steadiness of the narrative and the sure brushstrokes that Almodóvar uses to delineate them demonstrate the love and respect that he has for women and probably discloses much about his own experiences in his childhood household. Hard-working Raimunda (Pénelope Cruz) is married to Paco (Antonio de la Torre), a man who never really had much, but who loses his job not very long into the film. Paco is very much on the edge with the couple’s daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo), but when Raimunda comes home from work one day she find her daughter waiting in the rain and soaked to the skin: she has stabbed Paco to death and couldn’t stay in the same house as his dead body. Very quickly Raimunda fashions an alibi to cover her daughter in the event the body is found, but she takes great pains to make sure the body isn’t found.
Almodóvar ensures that there is a very direct foreshadowing for the killing: Paco can’t take his eyes off of his beautiful daughter in a way that leaves grave doubt that he could be a fatherly figure in her life. At the same time, he goes to great lengths to show off Raimunda’s curves and the unbelievable décolletage … attractions we see that she deprives Paco of …
But Paco’s death ushers in the second, and most engaging portion of the film: the plot thread that deals with Raimunda’s dead mother, Irene (Carmen Maura), and her return from the dead seemingly to accomplish something that had eluded her in life. Is she alive or is she dead? What does she need to accomplish, and what do Raimunda and her sister, Agustina (Blanca Portillo) need from her?
These are all key elements to what develops into an extremely vital, and gripping story.
Volver literally means “Come back” and it figures into a song that Raimunda sings, a song that demonstrates how much she has recovered from her life before Paco in just a few days since he was killed.
The movie is a gem. The movie’s extras feature a director’s commentary from Pedro Almodóvar which is very informative, but my one wish was that the commentary could have been dubbed into English for the non-Spanish speaking crowd.
Overall, though, if you’re of a mind to read a movie through twice, the comments by Almodóvar and Cruz are very sage and shed a lot on what it was like to make this distinctive and decidedly different black comedy. The other features are also fun, but it is the movie itself -- the script, the cast, the set designs, and the deft direction -- that shine through, regardless of whether you're watching it for the first, fifth, or nth time. Like the title suggests, Volver is the kind of movie that invites the audience to come back ...
