Volver
| Volver | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Pedro Almodóvar |
| Written by | Pedro Almodóvar |
| Produced by | Esther García (producer) Augstín Almodóvar (executive) |
| Starring | Penélope Cruz Carmen Maura Lola Dueñas Blanca Portillo Yohana Cobo Chus Lampreave |
| Music by | Alberto Iglesias |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
Running time | 121 minutes |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish |
Volver is a 2006 Spanish language film by director Pedro Almodóvar. It was one of the films competing for the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. It eventually won two awards: Best Actress [shared by the six main actresses] and Best Screenplay. Its premiere was held on March 10, 2006 in Puertollano, where the filming had taken place.
Synopsis & Plot Details
Template:Spoiler The film opens at in a cemetery were huge numbers of women are working to clean their gravestones. Two sisters, Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas) and Raimunda's daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) are cleaning the grave of their parents/grandparents who died in each others arms in a forest fire.
When their aunt dies Sole returns to the village for the funeral and is shocked to see the ghost of her mother in her aunt's house. When she returns home she hears a knocking from her car boot, her mother has followed her home. While Sole takes her mother in and gives her a haircut she tries to find out why she has come back. What unresolved task does she want to complete?
However, their mother Irene (Carmen Maura) is not a ghost, in fact their father died in the arms of his mistress, the mother of their neighbour in the home village, who 'coincidentaly' disappeared on the same day as the fire. Nevertheless, her mother does have issues to resolve, mainly the reasons why Raimunda hates her and why she is afraid to reveal herself to Raimunda. In the meantime she pretends to be a Russian that Sole has taken in off the street and who doesn't understand a word of Spanish but who can understand gestures extremely well.
Meanwhile Raimunda and Paula have problems. Paula killed her father in self defense of an attempted rape. Though self defence is not a crime Raimunda hides the body, utilising the trough freezer of a neighbour's restaurant. Paula then finds out that her fathers attempted justification of his planned rape, that she is not his daughter, is in fact true (though still not a justification).
When Raimunda finds out that her mother is not dead she is extremely upset. However, at this stage her daughter, Paula, has become friends with her grandmother and encourages Raimunda to go back and talk to her mother.
We now discover the cause of their fight. Raimunda was sexually abused by her father and Paula's father is Raimunda's father. Paula is Raimunda's daughter, but also her sister. Raimunda was angry with her mother for never noticing and stopping this abuse, as angry as her mother was with herself when she found out. Irene then expains that when she found out that her husband had abused their daughter she in fact started the fire that killed him (and his mistress). Because she was frightened of being caught she then hid for years in her sisters house, looking after her when she became too frail and old to look after herself, and taking advantage of the superstitions of the village folk who thought she was a ghost.
The film ends with the family reunited and with the mother staying hidden in the village for a few months more, again acting as a ghostly helper to look after their neighbour as she dies of cancer.
Almodóvar says of the story that "it is precisely about death, but it deals with this subject in a less anguished manner than that of the man who fell asleep watching Bad Education. 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."[1] Template:Spoiler-end
Critical response
The film got rave reviews when it was released in Spain. Fotogramas, the country's top film magazine, gave it a five-star rating [1]. It also received a standing ovation when it was screened at Cannes Film Festival, where it went on to win two major awards.
Box office
As of June 18, 2006, the film had grossed an impressive $12,112,542 at the Spanish Box Office. [2]
Reference
External links
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