Penelope Cruz returns to Almodovar's deliciously colorful world to give a towering performance as Raimunda, a woman resolved to maintain strength and defy misfortune in the lives of the women she loves: her teenage daughter (recently shaken by a horrific crime), her sister (running an illegal hair salon out of her apartment), a devoted family friend (chronically heartbroken), and her mother (recently returned from the dead). "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. Almodovar 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. Almodovar, if he is not yet their equal, surely belongs in their company." (NY Times) More at sonyclassics.com/volver.
2006, color, 2 hours 1 minute, Spain
