Volver

“This is a man’s world,” he sings, but James Brown didn’t sweep the dust from his own grave­stone. ​“This is a man’s man’s man’s world,” he sings, but James Brown didn’t hear the howl­ing of the East Wind that dri­ves peo­ple insane. ​“This is a man’s world,” he sings, but James Brown knows it wouldn’t mean noth­ing, noth­ing, not one lit­tle thing with­out a woman or a girl.

Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a woman’s world to the quick. They cook and cluck and kiss and, as the occa­sion demands, they kill. It means ​‘com­ing back’ in Eng­lish. It means com­ing back to La Man­cha, to com­e­dy, to reli­gion, rela­tion­ships and sex. It means com­ing back to Car­men Mau­ra after 17 years lost in the bit­ter­ness. It means com­ing back, so how is Volver so fresh, so inven­tive, so utter­ly alive with the joys of cinema?

In Madrid, Raimun­da (Pené­lope Cruz) lives with her young daugh­ter, Paula (Yohana Cobo) and her hus­band, Paco, in a tiny apart­ment. She works two jobs, menial ones, her hair teased into a bomb­shell of floor-scrub­bing chic, and it soon becomes clear that she’s the matri­arch of a bro­ken fam­i­ly. Her hus­band, Paco, slumps on a sofa drink­ing beer, grab­bing sly eye­fuls of his teenage daugh­ter. In the bed­room he’s all clum­sy come-ons, hap­py to crack one off while his wife cries her­self to sleep.

Raimunda’s sis­ter, Sole (Lola Dueñas), runs an ille­gal salon from the flat where she lives alone, aban­doned by her hus­band two years before. Here the local women gath­er to bitch about soap operas and receive mon­strous­ly out­ré hair-dos. She is old­er than Raimun­da, but timid – a for­lorn fig­ure who miss­es her par­ents, killed in a fire in La Man­cha sparked by the gusts of that East Wind.

Where Madrid is a city with­out char­ac­ter, its face­less sprawl and dusty car parks glimpsed through the win­dows of drab hous­es, La Man­cha is an icon of deep Spain. In the cap­i­tal, trash TV cre­ates a mod­ern mythol­o­gy of bet­ter liv­ing, but in the coun­try­side old ghosts still walk the streets. Though it has a toe dipped in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry (Cer­vantes’ wind­mills are sleek new tur­bines) the char­ac­ter of the place is lit­tle changed in 400 years.

This is the land of the dead, where women tend their grave­stones like a doorstep and death is a thresh­old kept as spot­less as any oth­er. Why not, in a town where the final fron­tier swings back and forth like a saloon door?

In La Man­cha, their Aunt Paula has died. At the funer­al, where the whole vil­lage has gath­ered (a coven of black-clad bat­tle axes flap­ping fans and fat dry lips at Sole), there are rumours that their moth­er, Irene, reap­peared to Paula as a ghost to help her through the last few months of her life. A neigh­bour, Agusti­na, has heard her voice.

Sole will be vis­it­ed by this spir­it – a bump in the night from the inside of her boot – who has unfin­ished busi­ness to set straight, but Raimun­da has oth­er con­cerns: her hus­band has made a mess of the kitchen and there’s seri­ous mop­ping to be done. There’s noth­ing in the good wife’s hand­book about remov­ing blood­stains from the floor. A knife in the chest isn’t your aver­age fam­i­ly cri­sis, but attempt­ing to rape your daugh­ter isn’t the aver­age dis­play of father­ly affection.

Volver is a film cut like glass. It refracts the gaze of the cin­e­ma screen, send­ing it spin­ning across gen­res like shafts of criss­cross­ing light. It’s as can­ny a movie as you’ll ever see, a film that chat­ters in your ear with crafti­ness, but it’s so beau­ti­ful­ly made, so del­i­cate­ly poised between art and art­ful­ness that it achieves a nat­u­ral­ness – a grace that gives its zigzag­ging emo­tion­al cadences an easy rhythm.

That the film slips so dizzy­ing­ly from com­e­dy to farce to tragedy, often in the same scene (Paco’s death is a mini mas­ter­class of dex­ter­ous genre hop­ping that twists and turns about the edge of a knife) is due to the per­for­mances. Almod­ó­var has said that he bran­dish­es actors like weapons; well if that’s so, Pené­lope Cruz is his nuclear but­ton. If any­thing, Volver is Cruz’s bit­ter rebuke to Hol­ly­wood – to Woman on Top and Cap­tain Corelli’s Man­dolin, to the whole TomKat, A list, Brangeli­na bol­locks of it all.

Raimun­da has a sul­try, kitchen sink sex­u­al­i­ty that strains the fab­ric of the screen just as her breasts bil­low dan­ger­ous­ly over the edges of those plung­ing neck­lines. Cruz is the proud pos­ses­sor of mas­sive tits, and Almod­ó­var is fas­ci­nat­ed by them. Twice oth­er char­ac­ters com­ment on them, while the direc­tor stares gog­gle-eyed over­head as she wash­es up, gold chains lost in an abyssal cleav­age. But in clas­sic Almod­ó­var style there’s a warn­ing note. He returns to this shot as Raimun­da scrubs the blood from the knife that killed her hus­band, lin­ger­ing on the trans­gres­sive prox­im­i­ty between eroti­cism and domes­tic rituals.

It’s the small details that make her – the ragged hand­ker­chief whipped from her bra, or the fact that she dri­ves her old­er sister’s car. She’s a tow­er­ing, ter­ri­fy­ing mon­u­ment to fem­i­nin­i­ty, an effort­less mul­ti­tasker who shops and cooks and digs unmarked graves while break­ing only the most serene of sweats. She’s Com­man­der-in-Chief of the tribe of women, press-gang­ing the neigh­bour­hood into a restau­rant scheme in one of those bril­liant­ly false movie moments that Almod­ó­var excels at.

But that’s not the whole sto­ry, either. As the films builds, a sub­tle shift takes place, and what seemed sexy and mod­ern as Raimun­da strut­ted down the street sud­den­ly looks trashy and nar­cis­sis­tic. Who does she think she is with her strap­py san­dals and emo­tion­al steam­rolling? What hypocrisy to say, ​“Don’t com­pli­cate oth­er people’s lives,” to Agusti­na, after pay­ing a hook­er to help her bury her husband.

What self­ish­ness when Agusti­na is dying of can­cer, to refuse her last wish – to find Irene’s ghost and ask after Agustina’s own moth­er who dis­ap­peared the same day as that fatal fire. What arro­gance to deny it when she hears of the affair that Agustina’s moth­er and her own father were con­duct­ing. ​“My moth­er wouldn’t allow it,” is all she’ll snap.

Raimun­da is for­giv­en in a jack­ham­mer final act, a reunion with Irene anchored by an exquis­ite­ly dark emo­tion­al pay off. It’s a sin­is­ter hint of the cycles of vio­lence and trans­gres­sion at the root of vil­lage life, and it’s also one more damn­ing indict­ment of the men who have ruined these women’s lives.

The men of La Man­cha are almost entire­ly absent – sour mem­o­ries and whis­pered secrets the only trace of their pass­ing. In a rare intru­sion, they stare out of the screen like a herd of ostrich­es, or a gag­gle of school­boys caught in some guilty act. At least Paco is dis­tin­guished by a name, though he’s hard­ly a flag car­ri­er for the broth­er­hood. And yet… Before Paula is molest­ed she vis­its Agusti­na with her aunt and moth­er. She sits apart from them, but the scene is deep staged so she stays in focus, legs slung lazi­ly over a chair; cav­a­lier, inno­cent, provocative.

If you won­dered about her then, if you care­less­ly imag­ined, should you see your­self in Paco’s lip-smack­ing look? When he mas­tur­bates next to his wife and a sin­gle tear rolls down her cheek, is there a sense of impli­ca­tion about it? Because it feels like a fin­ger point­ing out of the screen – use­less, horny, drunk­en layabouts. Maybe frat­ri­cide is the best thing that ever hap­pened to a fam­i­ly; after all, women are clear­ly bet­ter off with­out us.

If there’s an ambiva­lence to the film’s the­mat­ic focus, what’s not in doubt is that Volver is a prodi­gious­ly well-made movie, though not always in the ways you’d expect. Almod­ó­var is an urban­ite by habit, tilt­ing at the absur­di­ties of Span­ish soci­ety. But in Volver his out­ra­geous­ness is tem­pered by introspection.

In return­ing to La Man­cha, the town where his own moth­er lived and died, it’s as if the arch provo­ca­teur has redis­cov­ered some­thing of his own Quixot­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. ​“Through this film,” he said, ​“I have gone through a mourn­ing peri­od that I need­ed. I have said good­bye to some­thing which I had not yet said good­bye, and need­ed to.”

Pick apart the farce, the camp, and the dirty jokes and what’s left is a sense of qui­et heart­break. Volver is flam­boy­ant­ly con­ceived – full of visu­al cun­ning and con­ceits – but it’s filmed with sin­cer­i­ty, at times a con­fes­sion­al sim­plic­i­ty that’s both poignant and ele­gant. It’s not that Almod­ó­var is grow­ing up or calm­ing down, wor­ry­ing­ly for the rest of the Euro art house pack, it just seems like he’s get­ting better.