In the
film’s opening scene, a dry wind disturbs a group of women as they work to clean
up a loved-one’s gravesite after a funeral. It’s in the rural land of La
Mancha, and the wind sweeps present debris out of sight as much as it carries
in foreign and mysterious things from another place and time. Escaping
childhood family trauma, two sisters move to modern Madrid to live modern
lives; both entreupreneurs in different ways. Returning home for the funeral of
their aunt makes them acutely aware that lingering guilt and pain have followed
them to and from the big city, as well as drawn them home and to each other.
One sister simply refuses to acknowledge the past, and the other is both amused
by and afraid of it. Their deceased mother has been seen and heard in the small
village, whose superstitious residents nonchalantly chalk the rumors up to the
natural affairs of ghosts. The films of Almodovar are – to paraphrase Wim
Wenders on Ozu – a sacred treasure of contemporary cinema. No one else has come
close to reconciling in such a relaxed way melodrama and broad comedy, edification
and lust, arresting design and modest, human warmth. A gay man with a sharp
aptitude for stories about women, Almodovar is a cosmopolitan imbued with
nostalgia for provincial life. He seems at first glance a mountain of contradictions,
but through his art he brings all of these elements into a fully evolved vision
where they cease to feel incongruous. Rare is the true auteur who proves able to
make his style and themes homogenous and symbiotic, and in this sense Almodovar
is in select company with others of his generation like David Lynch, Brian De
Palma and Terry Gilliam. Most of the great directors have one or two films that
could be called emblematic, or testament films; Almodovar has many. Volver
is one of them.
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