VOLVER US opening

Pedro Almodovar’s Volver opened last weekend in LA and New York, and it’s having a great response from the public and the press.

“Pedro Almodóvar, the benevolent deity of this world, revealed it –or, rather, created it- piece by piece from one film to the next,” said A.O. Scott, in the New York Times.

Volver means “to return” in Spanish. And that, according to Almodóvar, is what he has done with this movie: he has returned to comedy after the acclaimed Bad Education and Talk to Her; he has returned to Carmen Maura, with whom he hadn’t worked for 17 years; he has returned to his motherland, La Mancha.

In this video, Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz talk about the movie in a press conference at the 44th New York Film Festival.

Quoting Almodóvar, the movie is about “three generations of women (who) survive easterly wind, fire, madness, superstition and even death through goodness, lies and an unlimited vitality.

Penélope Cruz offers a great performance of Raimunda, the strong sister of lonely Sole (short for Soledad, which means loneliness) and mother of teenager Paula. The sister’s mother, dead in a fire long ago, comes back in spirit in a moment where the sister’s lives are following strange paths.

The movie opens in a graveyard. There’s a lot of movement of widows polishing headstones and changing flowers. Even one of the neighbours, Agustina, is polishing her own grave. Raimunda explains to her daughter, Paula, that in the town this is a custom.

The movie is full of this kind of random facts: hilarious to some point but sad in essence. That’s how the movie goes: telling a story if suffering with a hopeful tone. As if Almodóvar wanted to say: life is hard, but there’s always something worth living it for.

As A.O. Scott’s review title says, the movie tells “The Darkest of Troubles in the Brightest of Colours.

In the next videos, you can see a feature about "Volver" that appeared in "Informe Semanal", a weekly tv program that offers a deep insight look to current events.