Near the start of Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, Volver, there is a highly significant shot. Taken from directly overhead, it shows the central character, Raimunda, washing the dishes. In her hands, towards the left of the screen, is a large kitchen knife. On the right of the screen, unmissably, is her impressive cleavage, emphasised by the overhead shot.
Now this brings two thoughts to mind. The first is that, in the classically Hitchcockian language of film, the overhead shot (as if from the viewpoint of the gods) indicates the moment at which the character’s fate is sealed. The second thought relates to what Anton Chekhov, I think it was, said about writing murderÂmystery plays: if you introduce a weapon in the first act, you’d better make sure it’s used by the third act.
In Volver, the shot points forward to Raimunda’s “fate”, though it’s way more complex than that would suggest, because she will put up a feisty battle against the slings and arrows of life. As for Chekhov’s dictum, the weapon will get used way sooner than the third act. Overall, the startling and slightly trashy juxtaposition of knife and breasts says a lot about the way Almodóvar will proceed to tell this story.
Raimunda is played by Penélope Cruz, who at first seems too impossibly gorgeous to be the centre of this working-class kitchen-sink drama (well, it’s as kitchen-sink as Almodóvar gets). Surely this luminously beautiful Raimunda, with her mountain of unruly dark hair, her huge, glistening eyes and generous gash of a mouth, wouldn’t still be struggling to make ends meet in a poor suburb of Madrid? She’d have got a modelling contract the first time she walked down the main road.
But Almodóvar isn’t dealing in straightforward realism here, despite the fact that Volver is one of his least stylised movies in years, in terms of both narrative and look. He has long drawn on the conventions of melodrama and soap opera for his convoluted plots, and here the story has the slightly absurd over-plotting of soap opera as well as its heightened emotion. In Volver, everyone’s eyes seem constantly to be brimming with tears — when the tears aren’t actually falling, that is.
This is what Hollywood used to call a “women’s picture”. The cast is almost entirely female, and men are either dispensed with early on or given only marginal roles. The movie’s dynamic is driven by the interactions of these women: Raimunda’s teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo), her rather sour sister (Lola Dueñas), her mother (Almodóvar veteran Carmen Maura), their old friend and helper from their native village (Blanca Portillo), and Raimunda’s neighbours, including an extremely buxom prostitute.
Of course, Almodóvar puts his own spin on this “women’s picture” (for one thing, Raimunda’s mother has just come back from the dead). To the melodrama he adds sophistication and irony — and humour is always present in an Almodóvar film, however serious or tragic. As in a soap opera, we accept that Raimunda is stunningly good-looking; she’s the heroine, after all, and Almodóvar knows that it’s easier for audiences to sympathise with a good-looking person. Besides that, obviously, he just loves the way she looks.
Certainly, this is a career-defining peach of a role for Cruz. She takes with gusto to the part of indomitable mother-figure; and just so we’re clear on the mythic resonances, Almodóvar references Mamma Roma herself, Anna Magnani. But it was right that all the women of the cast collectively won the best-actress award at Cannes last year. Cruz may be the most glamorous person here and undeniably central, but she’s busily surrounded by these other women, and her life is made up of her connections with them.
Volver means “to return”, and is the key word in a song Raimunda sings (with, once more, tears in her eyes). The return in question is to her native village, as well as the return of the past represented by that village — the secrets it holds. Many of Almodóvar’s movies contain a tension between the home village in the country and the character’s life in the city, but here it’s a major, structuring theme. The village is in La Mancha, Almodóvar’s own place of origin, and he invests it with a considerable emotional weight.
But then he is not afraid of full-blooded emotion, or able to do anything but care deeply for his characters, good or bad. His presence is palpable in his feeling for these people, and the result is yet another Almodóvar masterpiece. Don’t be ashamed to weep.