The opening scene of Volver, in which a large group of women work furiously, scrubbing and cleaning headstones in a graveyard, is one of a few scenes that comes directly out of writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s play book of visually striking and conceptually bizarre sequences; many of which are tattooed in the minds of millions since his breakthrough film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).
Life and Death and Almodovar
It is significant to single out the opening scene, in symbolizing the massive importance death has, as a tangible element, in Spanish society. The opening scene holds further import in discussing the art of Almodóvar; for the scene is not simply a visual stunt; a clever picture to woo a gullible public.
Apart from the cultural significance, everything that happens in Volver surrounding death has a deeper meaning and impact than first meets the eye. This is indeed what separates an artist like Almodóvar from other visually arresting film makers.
This argument, of style over substance is most commonly discussed among critics of David Lynch’s incredible photographic talent to shock and disturb, with images of death and violence, with suspect results, and questionable intentions, in films like Wild At Heart (1990) and Lost Highway (1997); not to discount of course Lynch’s ability to tell a visually effective, surrealistic story: Blue Velvet (1986), Mulholland Dr. (2001).
But, Almodovar takes these symbols of death, like graves and headstones; ghosts and spirits; and accomplishes the amazing feat of debunking the myths, while at the same time displaying how invaluable they can be in telling a story.
The Two Sides of Pedro Almodovar's Films
There tend to be two sides to Pedro Almodóvar’s films: in films like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), Talk To Her (2002), and Bad Education (2004), the film maker explores the psychic connection between human sexuality and emotional dysfunction; and the more mainstream efforts that lean toward melodrama and familial discord, High Heels (1991) and All About My Mother (1999).
Volver falls somewhere in between the two sides; in many ways containing the best of both; stories about women who must deal with family secrets and conflict, tied up in sexual and emotional abuse suffered at the hands of men.
Volver (to return to a place)
Raimunda, played with astonishing depth by Penelope Cruz, is a one of the women cleaning the graves, along with her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), and her sister Sole (Lola Dueñas).
From this grave site, these three women will encounter death in different ways: Raimunda will have to deal with an inconvenient corpse; Paula will face a violent and bloody altercation with a man; and Sole will form a bond with the ghost of her mother (and Raimunda’s), Irene (Carmen Maura), who died in a house fire many years ago.
Further still, there is the death of the elder Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave), who’s neighbor Agustina (Blanca Portillo) will eventually have to face her own mortality, which in return will set off a sequence of events that will uncover secrets long thought dead and buried.
Pedro Almodóvar has made the brightest, funniest, most life-affirming movie about death this side of Hal Ashby’s great Harold and Maude (1971). Like the Jazz Funerals of New Orleans or The Day of the Dead parades in Mexico, Volver celebrates death as an opportunity to renew; to lift the veil from the dark past and learn from mistakes; a certain reincarnation, or rebirth; a return.
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