Volver: Almodovar's Return

Volver simmers with all that you could want from Pedro Almodovar: marvellous actresses, offbeat wit, Sirkian colours, an eye for the eccentricity of the everyday, poignant dialogue, abrupt but adept changes of tone...but never quite comes to the boil. Penelope Cruz in a mature, starring role is stunning in every sense of the word, recalling Anna Magnani and Sofia Loren in her offhand sexual power masking a wounded sense of self. Wonderfully supported by Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Chus Lampreave and her Wonderbra, Cruz is the crux of this melodrama with its wrong-footing in the supernatural. The first hour is almost too perfect, but the second dissolves into directionless loose ends. Many promising new themes are elbowed aside by the bland central manifesto of female solidarity, which cannot compete with the conversion of same into the emotional powerhouse of the same director's All About My Mother and so ends up as something of a retread. The drama dissipates instead of accumulating and Alberto Iglesias's score is strangely muted, but Cruz gives one of the finest performances by any actress in any film by Almodovar, in the same rank as Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and Cecilia Roth. Even a minor Almodovar like this is something of a masterpiece.