Ill-Informed Gadfly

Penélope Cruz spends much of “Volver” poised on the precipice between sorrow and wrath, and it’s not until near the end that we find out why. Yet we remain patient because Pedro Almodóvar’s storytelling is so confident, and because Cruz’s Raimunda, while mysterious, is warm and tough and true – a radiant survivor. She allows a messy stew of emotions to bubble up from her seemingly flawless exterior. For whatever reason, it took a gay director to equip Cruz with neck-snapping curves and the most spectacular cleavage since Sophia Loren. “Volver” offers the uncomplicated pleasure of spending time with beautiful and three-dimensional women. It’s a relaxed and breezy effort for Almodóvar, who sets aside the formal ambition of his last two movies, the masterpiece “Talk to Her” and the difficult but worthy polemic “Bad Education.” He weaves a twisty domestic melodrama with offhand mastery. The title means “to return,” and it suggests the unfinished business and unspoken troubles surrounding Raimunda, her sister, her 14-year-old daughter, her recently deceased aunt and her aunt’s cancer-stricken neighbor. Almodóvar begins the movie in a graveyard, and he throws his characters into a limbo where death only complicates matters for those left behind. There’s plenty of confusion and misdirection, yet “Volver” has nothing but sweetness at its center.

LISTEN: Volver