Spanish for "Coming Back," Volver is a return to the all-female format of All About My Mother. Unlike Pedro Almodóvar's previous two pictures, the story revolves around a group of women in Madrid and his native La Mancha. (The cast received a collective best actress award at Cannes.) Raimunda (a zaftig Penélope Cruz) is the engine powering this heartfelt, yet humorous vehicle. When husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) is murdered, Raimunda makes like Mildred Pierce to deflect attention away from daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo). After telling everyone the lout has left, she struggles to conceal his body. The other women in her life all have secrets of their own. Her sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas), for instance, has taken in their mother, Irene (a sprightly Carmen Maura). Since Irene perished in a fire, is this person a ghost or simply a woman who looks like her? Then there's their childhood friend, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who is desperate to find out why her mother disappeared after the blaze. Was she responsible? Almodóvar deftly blends the ghost story with the murder mystery in his tribute to the Italian neo-realist films of the 1950s. The resilient Raimunda is a throwback to the earthy heroines of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. The latter appears in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima, which shows up on Sole's television one night (thus confirming the link). If Almodóvar's 16th feature lacks the emotional punch of the more audacious Talk to Her, it's less heavy-handed than Bad Education and Cruz is a revelation. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

From two-time Academy Award®-winner Pedro Almod var (2003 Best Original Screenplay Talk to Her; 2000 Best Foreign Language Film All About My Mother) comes VOLVER a comedic and compassionate tribute to women and their resilience in the face of life™s most outrageous tribulations. A luminous Pen ©lope Cruz leads an ensemble of gifted actresses including Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Raimunda (Cruz) and her sister Sole lost their parents in a tragic fire years ago or did they? Superstitious villagers claim that the girls™ departed mother Irene (Maura) has been seen wandering around their Aunt Paula™s home. When Irene appears to Sole she explains that she has returned to set right her daughters™ troubled lives and reveal shocking secrets that will impact everyone! Raimunda has "female troubles" of her own least of which is a corpse in the freezer! Winner of numerous film festival and critics™ awards VOLVER is a hilarious tale of love loss and forgiveness.System Requirements:Run Time: 121 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 043396152830 Manufacturer No: 15283

I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan of Almodovar's films, but I usually do enjoy watching them. My ambivalence towards him stems from the fact that, on the one hand, his movies tend to be messy works that try to do way too much. It's as if Almodovar is so bursting with creative energy and ideas that he just can't discipline himself to do one movie at a time, and instead tries to cram three or four into one. But, on the other hand, if one focuses on the scenes in each of the movies instead of the whole film, Almodovar's genius is sometimes breathtaking. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful scripts, superb acting. So my modus operandi for watching Almodovar these days is appreciating the scenes and forgetting about the coherency of the movie.

Volver is a mess, but a beautiful one. In an accompanying interview, Almodovar himself somewhat incredibly says that the film is about death: "it is precisely about death...More than about death itself, the screenplay talks about the rich culture that surrounds death in the region of La Mancha, where I was born. It is about the way (not tragic at all) in which various female characters, of different generations, deal with this culture." Most viewers, I suspect, won't have picked up on this, because, typically, death is only one of several themes. Others include mother-daughter relationships, incest, sexual abuse, friendship, and independent women. But forget all that, and focus on the scenes. The opening one of La Mancha women cleaning gravestones is one of the best to be found in an Almodovar film. Equally brilliant are the restaurant scenes. The final ones, in which Maura and Raimunda discuss the horrible family secret, truly mars the entire film. The secret has an incredible ring of falsity, and saps authenticity from what's gone before it.

Generally, the acting in "Volver" is superb. But for my money, the laurel goes to Lola Duenas for her portrayal of sister Sole.

great blu-ray disc, every almodovar movie has always something magical and this one has it too.

I finally got around to watching this movie after years of procrastinating and choosing something else on a visit to the rental store or when shuffling through previewed movies somewhere. I read the many reviews and clearly am not a student of the films of Almodóvar, his influences and tendencies, Spanish cinema, or even much of Penélope Cruz. I don't know if that disqualifies me to discuss my thoughts on this movie, but I thought it was good and am glad I picked it up.
The dvd back cover describes the movie as "hilarious" and "comedic" and I am truly clueless as to how anyone could use those adjectives to describe a movie that deals with incest, murder, abuse, and cancer just for openers. Talk about misleading...
Still, I enjoyed the movie and found the mysterious and at times disturbing story to keep my interest. The actors did a wonderful job and I was impressed with Cruz who I'd only seen in the horrid Vanilla Sky and in the disappointing Blow. She has to carry the movie and through the conclusion of the movie when all things are explained, I came to understand her brusque demeanor. Additionally, the scenery between Madrid and La Mancha was picaresque and a nice introduction to a country I have longed to visit.
The extras on my copy had interviews with Cruz, Almodóvar, and Carmen Maura. I noted one reviewer complained about the subtitles being choppy but my copy was smooth and without interruptions.
As with most movie reviews on Amazon, the plot has been explained repeatedly and furthermore there seems no shortage of guys willing to confess their fascination with the female lead. In addition, there is a healthy discussion of the director and his work. Then again, perhaps it is simply a need to vomit up the wealth of knowledge gleaned from a life spent studying movies and trying to out-trivialize one another with their endless fact dropping. I am not sure where some of these reviewers fit.
When I read the kind of reviews here, I wonder if this is a movie meant for pedestrian viewers like me. I wonder that my lack of knowledge regarding Almodóvar et al detract from what I should gain from watching this movie. Yet, I enjoyed it and I don't know why others wouldn't as well even without joining the debate about strong female characters, how Sophia Loren fits into the picture, the director's female role model issues, European movies versus those from the states, gay themes, the back story of La Mancha, or any of the myriad other issues reviewers felt were necessary to point out in their opinions.
I don't know about all of the women issues or the subtleties of the director and frankly don't care. I don't understand why the delineation has to come and be an issue. Who cares that there is only one man in the movie? Honestly, I didn't think to do a head count of gender as I was watching it. Also, there is some opinion that Almodóvar is trying to lump all men into negative categories (unfaithful, sexually depraved, predatory, et al). I didn't make that stretch. The two men who are a part of the plot are representative of the cyclical nature of abuse rather than a broad categorization of all men. I realized at the end that Cruz' ex-boyfriend was evidence of the cycle of abuse that often happens rather than an indictment of all men. There was a brief moment with Cruz and her daughter towards the end that hinted at a final end to this disastrous cycle as it seemed to indicate that the daughter has made peace with what happened to her and the man who did it. I certainly hope so since the members of this fictional family have certainly been through enough drama and tragedy for one life.
Volver is a well made and welcome break from the over abundance of predictable fare and I recommend it to anyone who likes good stories and good acting.

Carlos Gardel was a very popular tango singer during the late twenties and early thirties in Argentina. Lost to Hispanics due to a tragic airplane accident at Medellin's (Colombia) airport, he became almost inmediately a myth of the Spanish cult of the dead; and is one of his famous songs Volver, turned into "rumba flamenca" and performed by Penelope Cruz in one of the scenes of this sentimental movie, which gives to it the main title.

Full of references to the convention, and with characters taken maybe from reality or maybe from Latin television soap operas,[many references to TV programs are present and even a recreation of a popular and actual one in Spain] Volver is an ironic, humorous, and typical Almodovar's farce whose roots may go backwards to very old techniques of Spanish culture.

Me being a latino i was in the mode for a spanish movie so when i picked up volver it blew me out of the water. the story is great and the actors are superb. nothing is overdone or for that matter underdone. i really enjoyed and would recommend this for anyone no matter ethnicity