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Volver February 13, 2007 |
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Famed directors like Douglas Sirk and Ingmar Bergman come to mind when discussing the best male directors who fully came to understand the female perspective of their works, but perhaps no other male director in the history of cinema so totally reveres, and celebrates women quite like Spain’s great maestro Pedro Almodovar, and with his latest film, “Volver”, the director of such female-centric gems as “All About My Mother” and “Talk to Her” yet again adds to his resume a film of much depth, emotion, humor, and a keen understanding of mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and the complicated relationships holding them together. Penelope Cruz and Lola Duenas play sisters whose supposedly dead mother (Almodovar regular Carmen Maura) begins appearing to Duenas after an elderly aunt dies, while Cruz tries to cover up a murder and simultaneously open a restaurant with the help of her teenage daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), who is responsible for the murder in question. The hook is that the mother-daughter relationship between Cruz and Cobo is strong, while the estranged Maura had a falling out with Cruz before her death in a questionable house fire three years ago, leading to many relationship parallels, and a powerhouse of emotional possibilities with the reappearance of the late matriarch. Filled with bright colors and memorable characters, and directed with visual flare by one of the world’s greatest living directors, “Volver” celebrates the ties that bind us, and particularly, what it means to be a mother, a daughter, and a sister, all in one. by Adam Suraf |