Volver <\/em>(2006).<\/p>\nAs with many of Almod\u00f3var\u2019s films, here we have a family of women in which each generation mirrors the next. Raimunda (Pen\u00e9lope Cruz), her fourteen-year-old daughter Paula (Yohanna Cobo), and her husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) eek out an existence in a small apartment outside Madrid. Colorful and not drab (even the poor live among vivacious colors in Almod\u00f3var movies), their surroundings contradict the clear tensions in the marriage. Paco is an unemployed drunk who won\u2019t stop peeping on Paula. Raimunda works as both a prep cook and a hotel cleaning lady.<\/p>\n
Her sister illegally cuts and styles hair in her own apartment. To put matters as if this were a trailer from the aughts: their past\u2014including the death of their parents in an early-morning inferno\u2014haunts them in ways you can\u2019t imagine. It isn\u2019t easy. But they learn to value family and the hard work it takes to come\u2014and stay\u2014together. On the surface, you can hardly ask for a surer hand. Each detail complements the next, as if building to some overwhelming question.<\/p>\n
We open in the cemetery of the family\u2019s ancestral village, where local women, rubber gloves on and buckets at their feet, fastidiously scrub the tombs of the dead. A dastardly eastern wind, portending disaster (so we are told), blows. Paula complains about the oddity of the custom as Almod\u00f3var whisks us to the sisters\u2019 aunt\u2019s home, where the batty old woman talks about their mother as if she were alive. Then again, there\u2019s an unaccounted-for exercise bike in the bathroom. And, once home, Paco\u2019s eyes keep wandering over to Paula\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
Quite the set-up. Early on, I found myself entranced. We\u2019ve got the painful migration to the countryside, the war over tradition, the tantalizing possibility of a ghost story, and the stirrings of a mystery boiled over amidst Almod\u00f3var\u2019s vivid colors and beautiful, rustic Spanish facades. But the film loses its steam. At over two hours, the movie drags. Much of the next hour and more is a constant introduction of new elements without any clear indication what the actual mystery is. Something is going on with the mother\u2019s ghost; matters with Paco hit a fever pitch that fizzles out until the climax. The pot boils so fully and with so many different sub-plots that it runs over. No individual point managed to capture my attention because nothing received the time it deserved.<\/p>\n
Many movies weave together various sub-plots with no problem. Why the issue here, then? To my mind (and here I am thinking out loud as much as I am arguing anything), the movie lacks an anchor. It has no focus. It veers from one character to another, resisting my attempts to focus, to think for too long about any one thing.<\/p>\n
You might say \u201cthis is a melodrama! Soap-operatic twists are the whole point!\u201d You\u2019d be right. But that only works if I\u2019ve bought into the characters. And, for a film that contains sexual assault, violence, hauntings, adultery, deceit, daytime TV shows, and a cancer diagnosis, I felt surprisingly little attachment to the characters and their plights. The movie\u2019s chipper mood obviated any sense of danger. The comedy destroys any elevation of feeling we might expect from its melodramatic content.<\/p>\n
I joked to a friend that the Almod\u00f3var movies I have seen feel like Fassbinder films if he weren\u2019t evil. So much of what I love about the German director is his commitment to the reality of pain, not as a passing moment, but as something that marks life, an almost sadistic attachment to life\u2019s most torrid truths. That a melodrama makes. Volver <\/em>not so much. It goes down too easily and with too many and too light flavors. I couldn\u2019t bring myself to shed a tear, either in happiness or sadness. I was, in a word, left empty.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It feels bad to say, \u201cit just didn\u2019t connect with me.\u201d Where there is technical brilliance, there is not always emotional connection. Sometimes this experience stems from emptiness, the so-called \u201cexercise in style.\u201d Not always, though. On occasion, I can watch a movie, appreciate its technical merits, marvel at the performances, respect its script, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2640,"featured_media":4060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1731],"tags":[1793,1784,3270,5038,5041,5035],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-fassbinder","tag-melodrama","tag-pedro-almodovar","tag-penelope-cruz","tag-soap-opera","tag-volver"],"yoast_head":"\n
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