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If you don’t read in other languages, it’s difficult to really grasp what the fancy people are talking about when they rhapsodize about, say, how much better Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” is in the original French. But if you want a lesson in what can be lost in translation, Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver” gives a vivid demonstration. Not only is Penelope Cruz a radically different - better - actress when she’s acting in her native language, she actually seems more beautiful in Spanish.
In “Volver,” a movie that one hopes thrives despite what felt like six solid months of over-the-top advance hype, Cruz gives a radiant, funny performance as the outspoken Raimunda, the young mother of a 14-year-old daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo). She has a husband, Paco (Antonio de la Torre), but he’s not much of a lover or a spouse. Raimunda’s strength comes from a long line of women, including her aunt, her hairdresser-sister, and an old friend from the La Mancha pueblo where they grew up.
“Volver” opens in a graveyard, where the women, dutiful daughters all, are literally scrubbing the family graves, including that of Irene (Carmen Maura), the mother of Raimunda and her sister, Sole (Lola Duenas).
Irene has been dead for several years, killed in a tragic fire. But as this is a film by Almodovar, the master of the emotional and often comic drama, death doesn’t preclude her from dropping by to resolve some old issues with her friends and family. A game of hide and seek ensues, with every member of the family hiding something from each other.
The translation of “Volver” is “To Return,” which refers most obviously to the ghostly return of the mother, to the family fold. Irene hops into the trunk of Sole’s car when her daughter isn’t looking, hitching a ride back to the city with her.
But it’s also a return for Maura, the actress who starred in a number of Almodovar films, including 1987’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” before they took an almost 20-year hiatus from working together. For Cruz it’s a return as well; she last worked with Almodovar in 1999’s “All About My Mother.”
He suits them both. Maura is as sly as ever; her Irene exasperates and delights in equal measure. But Cruz really thrives with Almodovar. Her turns in American films have always been problematic (shrill in “Vanilla Sky,” embarrassing in “Gothika,” and just a Latina stereotype in the negligible “Woman on Top,” where she played a chef). In “Volver,” Raimunda takes an interesting detour into the catering business, and watching her play chef again, she seems like a different actress, comfortable, sexy, confident. Almodovar lets her be a woman (he even padded her bottom for “Volver,” saying she was too slim), whereas in American films, she’s too often asked to be a girl, or rather, the girl, intended for some man.
Men don’t get much screen time in “Volver,” and when they do, they’re generally causing trouble. Paco does just that, and his comeuppance is pure Almodovar: dramatic, matter-of-fact, but in the end, handled with the director’s unique touch. Bad and good exist in equal measure in Almodovar’s films, but he handles the gray areas of life with extraordinary humanity.
Irene’s return is about righting wrongs, and as it turns out, her original departure was all about righting wrongs as well, only in a fashion that she feels unsettled about.
Watch for this definitive Almodovar sequence: Raimunda is using paper towels to clean up a very large mess. We’re distracted momentarily by the bloom of color on the white pattern, then we think, she’s going about this all wrong, in too ladylike and inefficient a fashion. Finally, she surprises us with her efficiency. Life is messy, and women clean it up, then often, just as half of us apologize for a perfectly fine dinner as we’re putting it on the table, we apologize for the way we cleaned up. Raimunda, who has endured great pain already in her short life, may be past apologizing.
Almodovar knows the way women operate, he knows what makes a mother tick.
His women kiss like birds chirping at each other, they know the smell of their own mothers better than any other smell in the world. No matter how surreal the situation Almodovar puts them in, they always end up seeming, simply, utterly, beautifully real.
Compared to something as extraordinary as his “Talk to Her,” “Volver” may seem like a light little soap opera, but its strength, grace and resiliency, like Raimunda’s, should not be underestimated.
‘VOLVER’
A-
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Rated: R for some sexual content and language
Running time: 2 hours
