Penelope Cruz’s English language cinema career was, sadly, almost as disastrous as her stint as Tom Cruise’s arm candy. That makes it all the more gratifying to watch her flouncing back onto our screens under the supervision of Pedro Almodovar. Volver, the august Spanish director’s superb 16th feature, is an upbeat, Iberian Mildred Pierce with death as a central theme. There is, however, little chance of confusing this joyful melodrama with Saraband. Like much of Almodovar’s work, the film is – in the nicest possible way – gayness itself, but this time there are no transsexuals or minority preferences. No, Volver expresses its flamboyance through the magic of mommies.
Focusing on three generations of women, Almodovar depicts females of the species as magical creatures in a realm of their own. Raimunda (Cruz) is a Madridista working class mum struggling to support her teenage daughter (Duenas) and deadbeat husband. Being a man, he’s not a terribly decent person, and when he attempts to interfere with the girl, he comes to a justifiably sticky end. Moving between ‘La Villa’ and the sleepy village of La Mancha, a delightfully nonchalant soap opera plot takes in a murder mystery, incest, a batty pot-smoking neighbour (Portillo) and the semi-supernatural appearance of Raimunda’s mother, essayed with dowdy élan by Carmen Maura (in her first role for Almodovar since their falling out after Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown).
This is the movie Steel Magnolias desperately wanted to be in an utterly clueless way. Women, in their separatist state, a place where bartering and community and wiggly bottoms (including Cruz’s prosthetic one) reign, are where it’s at.
And so say all of us.