Volver

New from The Movie Snob

Volver (B+). This is only the second movie directed by Pedro Almodovar that I have ever seen. The other one was Talk to Her, which I found incredibly repugnant. Only a glowing review of this new movie on National Review Online got me into the theater to see it. And rather to my surprise, I really liked it. It is about the women in a family from the Spanish village of La Mancha and the men who hurt them. Seriously, there are very few men in this movie, and the few there are have very little screen time. Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, a woman who has a no-good husband, a teen-aged daughter, a single sister, and a close female friend named Agustina. The ghost of her deceased mother also plays an important role. Although the women in the film have generally been done wrong by men (almost entirely off-screen, happily), they survive and pull through by pulling together. Cruz does a fine job and probably deserves her Oscar nomination.