Volver
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Pedro Almodóvar
Written by	Pedro Almodóvar
Produced by	Esther García
Starring	Penélope Cruz Carmen Maura Lola Dueñas Blanca Portillo Yohana Cobo Chus Lampreave
Cinematography	José Luis Alcaine
Edited by	José Salcedo
Music by	Alberto Iglesias
Production company	El Deseo
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Entertainment España Sony Pictures Classics (global)
Release date	17 March 2006 (2006-03-17) (Spain)
Running time	121 minutes
Country	Spain
Language	Spanish
Budget	$9.4 million
Box office	$87.2 million

Volver (Spanish pronunciation: [bolˈβeɾ], meaning "to go back") is a 2006 Spanish comedy-drama^[1][2] film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, and Chus Lampreave. Revolving around an eccentric family of women from a wind-swept region south of Madrid, Cruz stars as Raimunda, a working-class woman forced to go to great lengths to protect her 14-year-old daughter Paula. To top off the family crisis, her mother Irene returns from the dead to tie up loose ends.

The plot originates in Almodóvar's earlier film The Flower of My Secret (1995), where it features as a novel which is rejected for publication but is stolen to form the screenplay of a film named The Freezer. Drawing inspiration from the Italian neorealism of the late 1940s to early 1950s and the work of pioneering directors such as Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Volver addresses themes like sexual abuse, loneliness and death, mixing the genres of farce, tragedy, melodrama, and magic realism. Set in the La Mancha region, Almodóvar's place of birth, the filmmaker cited his upbringing as a major influence on many aspects of the plot and the characters.

Volver premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It received critical acclaim and ultimately won two awards at the festival, for Best Actress (shared by the six main actresses) and Best Screenplay.^[3] The film's Spanish premiere was held on 10 March 2006 in Puertollano, where the filming had taken place. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar for the 79th Academy Awards, making the January shortlist. Cruz was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first Spanish woman ever to be nominated in that category.^[4]

Plot

Raimunda and Sole are sisters who grew up in Alcanfor de las Infantas, a small village in La Mancha, but now both live in Madrid. Their parents had died in a fire three years before.

Raimunda and her daughter Paula live with Paula's father Paco. When he attempts to rape Paula, claiming that he is not really her father, Paula stabs him to death in self-defense. Raimunda hides the corpse in the deep-freezer of a nearby restaurant with an absent owner, Emilio. When members of a film crew happen upon the restaurant, Raimunda strikes a deal to cater for them, and finds herself back in the restaurant business.

Meanwhile, Sole returns for the funeral of her elderly and dementia-stricken Aunt Paula. Aunt Paula's neighbour Agustina confesses to Sole that she has heard Paula talking to the ghost of their mother Irene. Sole encounters her mother's ghost herself, and when she returns to Madrid, she discovers that the ghost has stowed away in the trunk of her car. Sole agrees to let Irene stay with her and assist her with clients for her illicit hair salon, which she operates out of her apartment. Irene agrees to pose as a Russian immigrant who doesn't speak any Spanish. Irene questions why Raimunda hates her and is fearful of revealing her presence to Raimunda.

Raimunda reveals to Paula that Paco was not her biological father, promising to tell her the whole story later. Agustina is diagnosed with terminal cancer and goes to Madrid for treatment. Raimunda visits her in the hospital. Agustina asks Raimunda if she has seen her mother's ghost. Agustina hopes that the ghost will be able to tell her about her own mother, who disappeared three years before. Raimunda leaves Paula with Sole, rents a van and transports the freezer to a convenient spot by the river Júcar. While staying in Sole's apartment, Paula meets her grandmother's ghost and grows close to her. The next night, Agustina comes to the restaurant, and reveals two startling secrets: her mother and Raimunda's father were having an affair, and her mother disappeared on the same day that Raimunda's parents died.

Sole reveals to Raimunda that she has seen their mother's ghost, who is in the next room with Paula. Irene admits that she did not, in fact, die in the fire, and reveals the whole truth. The reason for Raimunda and Irene's estrangement is that Raimunda's father sexually abused her, resulting in the birth of Paula; thus, Paula is Raimunda's daughter and her sister. Irene tells Raimunda that she did not know about the abuse until Aunt Paula told her about it, and never forgave herself for not noticing it.

Irene explains that she found her husband in bed with another woman and started the fire that killed them both. The ashes that had been presumed to be Irene's were, in fact, the ashes of Agustina's mother, the woman with whom Irene's husband was having an affair. After the fire, Irene wandered for several days in the countryside, until she decided that she wanted to turn herself in. But first, she wanted to say goodbye to Aunt Paula, who had lost the ability to look after herself and with whom Irene had been living prior to setting the fire. Paula welcomed Irene home as if nothing had happened, and Irene stayed, caring for her sister and expecting that the police would come soon to arrest her. Due to the superstitious and closed nature of the community, however, the police never came and the residents, accustomed to tales of the dead returning, explained the rare sightings of Irene as a ghost.

The family reunites at Aunt Paula's house. Irene reveals her presence to Agustina, who believes her to be a ghost. Irene pledges to stay in the village and care for Agustina as her cancer worsens, saying to Raimunda that it was the least that she could do after killing Agustina's mother. Raimunda visits her mother at Agustina's house, and the two embrace and promise to repair their relationship.

Cast

Top to bottom: Penélope Cruz, Blanca Portillo and Lola Dueñas star in the film.

• Penélope Cruz as Raimunda, a mother living in Madrid's suburbs
• Carmen Maura as Irene Trujillo, the mother of Raimunda and Sole
• Yohana Cobo as Paula
• Blanca Portillo as Agustina
• Lola Dueñas as Soledad ("Sole")
• Chus Lampreave as Aunt Paula
• Antonio de la Torre as Paco
• María Isabel Díaz as Regina
• Carlos Blanco as Emilio
• Neus Sanz as Inés
• Leandro Rivera as Auxiliar Producción
• Yolanda Ramos as Presentadora TV

Production

Music

The tango "Volver" by Carlos Gardel with lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera is converted to flamenco and is sung in the movie with the voice of Estrella Morente and lip synced by Penélope Cruz. The dance tune playing at the party prior to Raimunda's lip syncing is called "Good Thing" by the British three-piece indie-dance combo Saint Etienne.

Reception

Critical reception

Almodóvar and Cruz on the red carpet at the 2006 Prince of Asturias Awards.

Fotogramas, Spain's top film magazine, gave it a five-star rating.^[14] Upon its US release, A. O. Scott made it an "NYT Critics' Pick" and wrote:^[15]

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. Almodóvar 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. Almodóvar, if he is not yet their equal, surely belongs in their company. Volver is often dazzling in its artifice—José Luis Alcaine's ripe cinematography, Alberto Iglesias's suave, heart-tugging score— but it is never false. It draws you in, invites you to linger and makes you eager to return.

Roger Ebert gave it his highest rating of four, calling it "enchanting, gentle, transgressive" and notes "Almodovar is above all a director who loves women—young, old, professional, amateur, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, dead, alive. Here his cheerful plot combines life after death with the concealment of murder, success in the restaurant business, the launching of daughters and with completely serendipitous solutions to (almost) everyone's problems".^[16]

As of 2020, the film has a 91% rating from critics at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 158 reviews out of 173 critics, and an average rating of 7.8/10, with the general consensus being "Volver catches director Pedro Almodóvar and star Penélope Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film".^[17] It also has a score of 84 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 38 critics.^[18]

See also

• List of submissions to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Spanish submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• Audio and Transcript from a 4 August 2006 interview about Volver with Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz at the National Film Theatre
• Volver at IMDb
• Volver at AllMovie
• Volver at Rotten Tomatoes
• Volver at Metacritic
• "Volver". sonyclassics.com. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016.
• Volver Production Notes from moviegrande.com