Volver

Volver
by Pedro Almod?var

Volver
List Price: $14.94
Category: DVD
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Blanca Portillo, Carmen Maura, Lola Due?as, Pen?lope Cruz, Yohana Cobo
Director: Pedro Almod?var
Brand: CRUZ,PENELOPE
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: Spanish (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 121 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures

Movie Reviews of Volver

Movie Review: story of women, frequently mezmerizing
Summary: 4 Stars

This is a movie about women. Men rarely appear and when they do are usually loutish and brutish. The women seem completely self-sufficient, mutually supportive, brave and resourceful.

The memorable opening scene makes the point. Women from a village in the Spanish plains are busy polishing and cleaning their husbands' headstones and tombs. The camera widens and we see scores and scores of women.

Penelope Cruz gives a wonderful performance. Her presence lights up the screen even when she is seen weeping bitterly. At such moments, she looks almost haggard but her inner beauty shines through.

Cruz is at the fulcrum of this movie. I don't want to disclose any surprises so I'll simply say the story concerns three generations of women, all of whom have to overcome the trauma of ill-treatment by men. They do so by painfully uniting.

The photography is frequently arresting and the story engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Summary of Volver

Two sisters living in Madrid learn from their aunt that their mother, killed years earlier in a fire has returned.
Genre: Foreign Film - Spanish/misc SA
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD
Spanish for "Coming Back," Volver is a return to the all-female format of All About My Mother. Unlike Pedro Almod?var's previous two pictures, the story revolves around a group of women in Madrid and his native La Mancha. (The cast received a collective best actress award at Cannes.) Raimunda (a zaftig Pen?lope Cruz) is the engine powering this heartfelt, yet humorous vehicle. When husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) is murdered, Raimunda makes like Mildred Pierce to deflect attention away from daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo). After telling everyone the lout has left, she struggles to conceal his body. The other women in her life all have secrets of their own. Her sister, Sole (Lola Due?as), for instance, has taken in their mother, Irene (a sprightly Carmen Maura). Since Irene perished in a fire, is this person a ghost or simply a woman who looks like her? Then there's their childhood friend, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who is desperate to find out why her mother disappeared after the blaze. Was she responsible? Almod?var deftly blends the ghost story with the murder mystery in his tribute to the Italian neo-realist films of the 1950s. The resilient Raimunda is a throwback to the earthy heroines of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. The latter appears in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima, which shows up on Sole's television one night (thus confirming the link). If Almod?var's 16th feature lacks the emotional punch of the more audacious Talk to Her, it's less heavy-handed than Bad Education and Cruz is a revelation. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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