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Grand Prix 2006:
There and Back
Pedro Almodóvar's "Volver/Return"
By Violeta Kovacsics
In a sudden about-turn, Pedro Almodóvar is heading back to where he started out from. Behind him now is his drama "trilogy" — All about my mother (Todo sobre mi madre, 1999), Talk to her (Hable con ella, 2002) and Bad education (La mala educación, 2004) — and emblazoned ahead on the horizon is Return (Volver, 2006), a word that perfectly encapsulates the latest film from this Spanish film director. Little given to subtlety and much given to making himself the central figure around which his work revolves, the title enunciates the place this film holds in Amodóvar’s film world. A quadruple return: firstly to La Mancha, the land of his childhood; secondly, to a muse: Carmen Maura; thirdly, to a cinema of women; and fourthly and most importantly, to cross-bred genres: comedy with shades of melodrama, and melodrama with more than a dash of humour.
Carmen Maura is back again, though the film clings hard to the shapely figure of Penélope Cruz, the nexus of the web of feminine relations presented in Return. She is niece, daughter, sister and mother. The most moving sequence in the film hinges on her as she tearfully sings a flamenco version of Return, the tango by Carlos Gardel. Almodóvar's staging softens any feeling of distance that this playback scene might arouse (the song is performed by flamenco-singer Estrella Morente). The shot/reaction-shot sequence establishes a simple, emotional link between mother and daughter — Penélope Cruz and Carmen Maura. The story once more reveals a story-line that is consistent with this director's career: moving from the fetish actress of his early period to another who may become a new muse.
The model for the character played by Penélope Cruz is none other than Anna Magnani, the quintessential mamma of the cinema. Almodóvar, as a cinema enthusiast, has no compunction over equipping his leading actress with a false bottom, emulating the figure of the Italian actress. Almodóvar makes this explicit from the outset, with a close-up of the rear ends of the two sisters (Penélope Cruz and Lola Dueñas) as they close the car boot after visiting their sick aunt. A single shot serves to define two ideas: firstly, the idea of a cinema that surrenders to the contrived rather than sticking to reality; and secondly, a space — the boot of the car, which is to reveal the phantom of Carmen Maura. This line comes to a head in the sequence that brings the film to an end, with the mother and daughter sitting on an artfully-lit bench.
Almodóvar thus builds up a moving story of relationships, well-guarded secrets, and women who lean on each other indiscriminately. Our director from La Mancha is going back to his roots, and in this sense the film Return is a turning-point that links up beautifully with another film that represented an inexorable watershed in his career: What Have I Done to Deserve This?(¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?, 1984) starring that same Carmen Maura who is now handing over her place to Penélope Cruz. While What Have I Done to Deserve This? came as a shift from comedy to melodrama, Return goes the other way: from his recent dramas back to humour. Both feature twin sequences, though they have mutated as the passage of time has endowed Almodóvar with a firmer touch in handling his films. A shining example of this is the sequence in which Penélope Cruz discovers the dead body of her husband and then coolly covers up her daughter. Almodóvar balks at nothing in this: first he shows a close-up of the rubbish bin in the kitchen, full of the husband's empty beer cans, and then the same bin filling up with the bloodied tissues she uses to wipe the blood-stains off the floor. In the same way, the white of the handkerchiefs becomes stained in red in an aerial shot of cruel aesthetic beauty.
Almodóvar is back, Almodóvar the devotee of black humour, the undisputed pillar of contemporary melodrama, to bring nuanced comedy into the panorama of Spanish cinema.
Violeta Kovacsics is a film critic from Barcelona. She writes for 20/30 (Avui), Go Mag and Enfocarte.
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