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Volver

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Volver (2006)

91%
95%
90%
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91 %
Reviews Counted: 157 Fresh: 143  Rotten:14 Average Rating: 7.8/10
 
Consensus: Volver catches director Pedro Almodovar and star Penelope Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film. This magical tragicomic melodrama may be Almodovar's most restrained work to date, but it still features his trademarks: a strong attention to color and detail, a celebration of the trials and tribulations of women, and, of course, the inestimable Carmen Maura. The lovely Penelope Cruz hasn't shone more brightly as she does here.
 

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The Tomatometer measures the percentage of positive reviews from Approved Tomatometer Critics for a certain movie.[-]

Runtime: 2 hrs 1 min

Theatrical Release: Nov 3, 2006 Limited

Box Office: $12,830,604

Synopsis: Madrid. Today. Raimunda is a young mother, hard working and very attractive, with an unemployed husband and a daughter in mid-adolescence. The family finances are very shaky, so Raimunda has got several jobs. She is a very strong woman, a born fighter, but also very fragile emotionally. She... Madrid. Today. Raimunda is a young mother, hard working and very attractive, with an unemployed husband and a daughter in mid-adolescence. The family finances are very shaky, so Raimunda has got several jobs. She is a very strong woman, a born fighter, but also very fragile emotionally. She has kept a terrible secret to herself since childhood. Her sister Sole is a little older. Timid and fearful, she makes her living with an illegal (undeclared) hair salon. Her husband left her and went off with a client. Since then she has lived on her own. Paula is their aunt. She lives in a village in La Mancha where the whole family was born. A village swept by the east wind, the direct cause of the high rate of insanity registered there. That damn wind is responsible for the many fires that devastate the area every summer. The parents of Sole and Raimunda died in one of those fires. A Sunday in spring, Sole calls Raimunda to tell her that Agustina (a neighbour in the village) has phoned to tell her that their Aunt Paula has died. Raimunda adored her aunt, but she can’t go to the funeral because moments before getting the call from her sister, when she had just come back from one of her jobs, she had found her husband dead in the kitchen, with a knife stuck in his chest. Her daughter confesses that she killed him because he had got drunk and kept making sexual advances to her. The most important thing for Raimunda is to save her daughter. She still doesn't know how, but what she certainly can’t do is accompany Sole to their aunt's funeral in La Mancha. Sole reluctantly goes back to the village on her own. Among the women who accompany her at the wake she hears rumours that her mother (who died in a fire with her father) came back from the other world to look after Aunt Paula in her final years, when she was ill. The neighbours talk quite naturally about the mother's "ghost". When Sole returns to Madrid, after parking her car, she hears noises coming from the trunk. A voice calls to her to open it and let her out, and says that she’s her mother. Sole is terrified at first. The knocking from the inside the trunk continues. Sole opens it and discovers the ghost of her mother in there, surrounded by bags. She doesn't dare even look at her, but when she manages to overcome her fear she sees that the ghost is just as her mother was in life, except that her hair is almost white and unkempt and her skin is paler. She brings her upstairs to her apartment, and asks her how long she is going to stay. For as long as God wills, the ghost answers. Given the range of that reply, Sole has got no choice but to live with her mother’s ghost and let her get involved in the work in the hair salon. She introduces her to the first clients as a Russian beggar she met on the street and took in out of charity. When there are clients, the mother doesn’t speak, she just washes their hair and smiles. Sole doesn't dare tell her sister about the situation she's in. For her part, Raimunda only tells her that Paco, her husband, has left her and that she has a feeling he won't be back. Really, she is trying to get rid of his body, but she can't find the right moment because she has got a new job that pays well and also offers a possible solution to her pressing problem… (what to do with the body). The untenable becomes routine. Each of the two sisters takes a leap in the dark, surviving situations that are very tense, melodramatic, comic and also very emotional. Both women resolve them with audacity and by telling endless lies. "Volver" is a story of survival. All the characters are fighting to survive, even the grandmother's ghost. The grandmother's ghost tells Sole that she wants to see her daughter Raimunda, and her granddaughter. She has to talk to Raimunda. In fact, that conversation is the reason she has come back from the other world… and that supernatural urgency has to do with the secret that Raimunda has hidden since she was a child. She doesn't tell Sole this. But Raimunda has a very strong character, she isn't as soft as Sole and she doesn't believe in ghosts, not even when she finds her mother hiding under the bed, in Sole's house… All this is just the beginning of a story that is complex and simple, touching and atrocious, one that affects the women in Raimunda's family, the neighboring women and a few men. [More]

Genre: Comedies

Starring: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Chus Lampreave

Director: Pedro Almodovar
Producer: Esther Garcia
Composer: Alberto Iglesias

DVD Info

Release:

Apr 3, 2007

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Keep Case
  • Anamorphic Widescreen - 2.35

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - Spanish
  • PCM 5.1 - Spanish
  • Subtitles - English

Additional Release Material:

  • Documentaries - "Tribute to Penelope Cruz"
  • Interviews - 1. Carmen Maura - Star
  • 2. Pedro Almodóvar - Director
  • 3. Penélope Cruz - Star

Buy It On DVD

Reviews

 
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Ratings Image
4.5/5

At the center of this hectic universe, [Cruz] never misses a step and may even elevate what Almodovar originally conceived.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/21/08
Matthew Sorrento
Film Threat
Ratings Image
N/A

With all its unexpected twists and turns, the story still unfolds naturally, like some gaudy Mediterranean flower.

Full Review | comment Comment
05/12/08
Thomas Peyser
Style Weekly (Richmond, VA)
Ratings Image
8/10

Pedro Almodovar's Volver is amazingly bright, fresh and clean for a film dealing with murder, adultery, incest, malignant disease and the occasional supernatural apparition.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/28/08
Brandon Fibbs
BrandonFibbs.com
Ratings Image
4/4

Click to read the article

Full Review | comment Comment
07/14/07
Joe Lozito
Big Picture Big Sound
Ratings Image
4/4

Hollywood, take notice: If you hand Penelope Cruz a role with more depth than the paper it's printed on, this is what you'll get.

Full Review | comment Comment
04/27/07
Jonathan R. Perry
Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas)
Ratings Image
4.5/5

Click to read the article

Full Review | comment Comment
04/16/07
Film Threat
Ratings Image
N/A

... teeters delicately on the edge of black comedy while still warming the heart.

Full Review | comment Comment
04/10/07
Dawn Taylor
Portland Tribune
Ratings Image
4.5/5

Until now, you may not have considered Penelope Cruz the modern-day successor to Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford. But director Pedro Almodovar's delightful 'Volver' could change your mind.

Full Review | comment Comment
03/30/07
James Sanford
Kalamazoo Gazette
Ratings Image
5/5

...a knowing treatise on the currents that run between mothers and daughters.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/11/07
Jim Lane
Sacramento News & Review
Ratings Image
5/5

So how good is Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar's latest effort? "Volver" (to return) is so mesmerizingly quirky that I sat through a screening with an injured right arm writhing with pain as I became immersed in the film.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/11/07
Dan Lybarger
eFilmCritic.com
Ratings Image
4.5/5

The Spanish master brings his own story to the screen with intense emotion, vivid characterization (so rare in too many of his colleagues) and a marvellous sense of magic ...

Full Review | comment Comment
02/10/07
S. James Wegg
JWR
Ratings Image
N/A

In this hand-stitched, gentle giant of a film, return is recovery -- by its very nature -- and all ghosts are friendly if you'd only let them in.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/09/07
Michelle Orange
Reeler
Ratings Image
3.5/4

Almodovar's latest is an emotionally rich film about forgiveness, atonement, and second chances that either sex can relate to.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/05/07
Eric Melin
Scene-Stealers.com
Ratings Image
3/10

It's nothing more than a chick flick disguised to look interesting to guys.

Full Review | comment 2 Comments
02/05/07
Fiore Mastracci
Outtakes With Fiore
Ratings Image
4/6

Even if Volver sounds too high-concept for you, know that Almodóvar is smart enough not to rest on laughs alone, extending his premise to dark, though occasionally tidy psychological territory.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/03/07
Joshua Rothkopf
Time Out New York
Ratings Image
7/10

Pedro Almodóvar gives Penelope Cruz a great woman's role that recalls the classic performances of Italian actress Anna Magnani.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/02/07
John Wirt
Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)
Ratings Image
A

It feels like a Chabrol film.

Full Review | comment Comment
02/01/07
Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ratings Image
B+

The way that Almodovar's resilient women rise above their traumatic pasts to serve one another and their community is a microcosm of idealized reality that welcomes scrutiny.

Full Review | comment Comment
01/31/07
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
Ratings Image
3.5/4

Comedic soap opera meets ghost story in "Volver," a haunting and often surprising story about a woman who faces challenges at every turn.

Full Review | comment Comment
01/29/07
Linda Cook
Quad City Times (Davenport, IA)
Ratings Image
N/A

Volver is far from a paint-by-numbers, Mad Lib of a movie, but rather a fresh and touching exploration of family, tragedy and second chances.

Full Review | comment Comment
01/29/07
Mike Ward
Richmond.com
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