Volver (Spanish pronunciation:[bolˈβeɾ], meaning "to return") is a 2006 Spanish comedy-drama[1][2] film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, and Chus Lampreave. Revolving around an eccentric family of women from a wind-swept region south of Madrid, Cruz stars as Raimunda, a working-class woman forced to go to great lengths to protect her 14-year-old daughter Paula. To top off the family crisis, her mother Irene returns from the dead to tie up loose ends.
The plot originates in Almodóvar's earlier film The Flower of My Secret (1995), where it features as a novel which is rejected for publication but is stolen to form the screenplay of a film named The Freezer. Drawing inspiration from the Italian neorealism of the late 1940s to early 1950s and the work of pioneering directors such as Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Volver addresses themes like sexual abuse, loneliness and death, mixing the genres of farce, tragedy, melodrama, and magic realism. Set in the La Mancha region, Almodóvar's place of birth, the filmmaker cited his upbringing as a major influence on many aspects of the plot and the characters.
Volver premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It received critical acclaim and ultimately won two awards at the festival, for Best Actress (shared by the six main actresses) and Best Screenplay.[3] The film's Spanish premiere was held on 10 March 2006 in Puertollano, where the filming had taken place. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar for the 79th Academy Awards, making the January shortlist. Cruz was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first Spanish woman ever to be nominated in that category.[4]
Plot
Raimunda and her daughter, Paula, live with Raimunda’s husband, Paco, who Paula believes is her father. When Paco attempts to rape Paula, saying that he is not really her father, Paula stabs him to death in self-defense. Claiming her husband has run off, Raimunda hides his corpse in the deep-freezer of a shut-down nearby restaurant she is minding for the absent owner, Emilio. When members of a film crew come to the restaurant to cater a week's meals, the resourceful Raimunda strikes a deal to earn much needed money in her husband’s absence.
Though they both now live in Madrid, Raimunda and Sole are sisters who grew up in Alcanfor, a small village in La Mancha. Their parents died there in a fire three years previously. Meanwhile, Sole returns for the funeral of her elderly, dementia-stricken Aunt Paula. A neighbor, Agustina, confesses to Sole that she heard Paula talking to the ghost of Sole's and Raimunda's mother, Irene. Encountering her mother's ghost herself in Aunt Paula’s house, upon returning to Madrid, Sole finds that the ghost has stowed away in the trunk of her car. Sole lets Irene stay with her to assist at the illicit hair salon Sole operates out of her apartment, posing as a Russian immigrant who doesn't speak Spanish. The two conceal Irene’s presence from Raimunda, who hates her mother.
Raimunda reveals to Paula that Paco was not her biological father, promising to tell her the whole story later. Leaving Paula with Sole, with the help of two paid suitably unquestioning female neighbors, Raimunda rents a van and transports the freezer containing the body to a spot by the river Júcar, where they bury it.
Meanwhile, diagnosed with terminal cancer, Augustina comes to Madrid for treatment. When Raimunda visits her in the hospital, Agustina asks Raimunda if she has seen her mother's ghost; Raimunda fears that Augustina too is exhibiting dementia. Agustina hopes the ghost will be able to tell her about her own mother, who disappeared three years before. While staying in Sole's apartment, Paula meets her grandmother's ghost, growing close to her. The next night, Agustina comes to the restaurant and reveals two startling secrets: her mother and Raimunda's father were having an affair, and her mother disappeared on the same day that Raimunda's parents died.
Sole reveals to a skeptical Raimunda that she has seen their mother's ghost, who is in the next room with Paula. Revealing the whole truth, Irene admits that she did not die in the fire. The reason for Raimunda and her estrangement, Irene has come to realize, is that Raimunda's father sexually abused Raimunda, resulting in the birth of Paula. Thus, Paula is Raimunda's daughter and her sister. Unaware of Raimunda’s sexual abuse until Aunt Paula told her about it, Irene has never forgiven herself for being oblivious to it and believing Raimunda's pregnancy due to promiscuity. Finding her husband asleep in bed with another woman, Irene started the fire that killed them both. The ashes presumed to be Irene's were the ashes of Agustina's mother, the woman with whom Irene's husband was having an affair.
After the fire, Irene wandered for several days in the countryside until deciding to turn herself in. First, however, she wanted to say goodbye to Aunt Paula, with whom Irene had been living prior to setting the fire and who had lost the ability to look after herself. Paula welcomed Irene home as if nothing had happened, and Irene stayed, caring for her sister and expecting that the police would come soon to arrest her. Due to the closed nature of the superstitious community, however, the police never came. Accustomed to tales of the dead returning, the residents explained the rare sightings of Irene as ghost sightings.
The family reunites at Aunt Paula's house. Irene reveals her presence to Agustina, who continues to believe her to be a ghost. As penance, Irene pledges to stay in the village and care for Agustina as her cancer worsens, saying to Raimunda that it is the least she can do after killing Agustina's mother. Raimunda and her mother embrace and promise to repair their relationship, with Raimunda regularly visiting her mother at Agustina's house.
Volver was first developed by Pedro Almodóvar, based on a story actress Marisa Paredes told him during the production of their 1995 film The Flower of My Secret, another film set in the La Mancha region.[5] The story revolved around a heartbroken Puerto Rican man who opts to kill his mother-in-law in hopes of reuniting with his beloved wife, who left him and broke off contact, at her mother's funeral. Owning a restaurant, he leaves it in his neighbour's care, when he is about to kill his victim.[5] Fascinated by the story and its background, Almodóvar decided on incorporating elements of it into the screenplay of The Flower of My Secret, making it the plot of a movie-within-the-movie based on the main character's novel in the film.[5] While working on the script for Volver, he would however settle on outlining the role of the neighbour Raimunda, as the film's central character, while Emilio, the Puerto Rican, eventually became a supporting role only.[6]
Almodóvar says of the story that "it is precisely about death...More than about death itself, the screenplay talks about the rich culture that surrounds death in the region of La Mancha, where I was born. It is about the way (not tragic at all) in which various female characters, of different generations, deal with this culture".[7]
Casting
Penélope Cruz was the first reported to have landed one of the starring roles in Volver, having previously worked with Almodóvar on his films Live Flesh (1997) and All About My Mother (1999).[8] In preparing for her role, the actress watched Italian neorealism films from the 1950s, many of them starring Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, to study "the Italian maggiorate" that Almodóvar envisioned for her performance in the film.[5] Cruz, who had to wear a prosthetic bottom while filming, noted the role of Raimunda as "the best gift an actress can get".[9]
Carmen Maura, the star of Almodóvar's debut Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) and five additional films with the director, was the first to be cast in the film alongside Cruz.[8] Her engagement marked her first collaboration with Almodóvar after a period of 18 years and a reported fallout during the production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1989).[10] Maura commented on the "borderline character" of Irene as a "very complicated [role to play]".[10]
The tango "Volver" by Carlos Gardel with lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera is converted to flamenco and is sung in the movie with the voice of Estrella Morente and lip synced by Penélope Cruz. The dance tune playing at the party prior to Raimunda's lip syncing is called "Good Thing" by the British three-piece indie-dance combo Saint Etienne.
Reception
Box office
In the US alone, the film had made $12,897,993 (15.4% of the total) at the box office after 26.4 weeks of release in 689 theatres. The box office figure from the rest of the world is somewhere in the region of $71,123,059 (84.6% of the total) according to Box Office Mojo. The total worldwide gross is estimated at $84,021,052.[12]
As of 22 January 2007 the film had grossed $12,241,181 at the Spanish box office.[13]
Fotogramas, Spain's top film magazine, gave it a five-star rating.[14] Upon its US release, A. O. Scott made it an "NYT Critics' Pick" and wrote:[15]
To relate the details of the narrative—death, cancer, betrayal, parental abandonment, more death—would create an impression of dreariness and woe. But nothing could be further from the spirit of Volver which is buoyant without being flip, and consoling without ever becoming maudlin. Mr. Almodóvar acknowledges misfortune—and takes it seriously—from a perspective that is essentially comic. Very few filmmakers have managed to smile so convincingly in the face of misery and fatality: Jean Renoir and Billy Wilder come immediately to mind, and Mr. Almodóvar, if he is not yet their equal, surely belongs in their company. Volver is often dazzling in its artifice—José Luis Alcaine's ripe cinematography, Alberto Iglesias's suave, heart-tugging score— but it is never false. It draws you in, invites you to linger and makes you eager to return.
Roger Ebert gave it his highest rating of four, calling it "enchanting, gentle, transgressive" and notes "Almodovar is above all a director who loves women—young, old, professional, amateur, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, dead, alive. Here his cheerful plot combines life after death with the concealment of murder, success in the restaurant business, the launching of daughters and with completely serendipitous solutions to (almost) everyone's problems".[16]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 91% rating from critics, based on 158 positive reviews out of 173 critics, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's consensus states :"Volver catches director Pedro Almodóvar and star Penélope Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film".[17] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 38 critics.[18]
Top ten lists
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2006.[19]
Sight & Sound magazine's critics poll named Volver the 2nd-best film of 2006.[20] In 2019, The Guardian ranked the film 46th in its 100 best films of the 21st century list.[21]
Accolades
Volver received a standing ovation when it was screened as part of the official selection at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Best Screenplay award as well as the award for Best Actress — which was shared by the six stars of the film.[3]
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