Monday, February 05, 2007
Volver
"To return" directed by Pedro Almadovar
This is a wonderful movie about the world of women. Penelope Cruz is luminous. Brilliant and resourceful. Her character deals with the problems she is presented with in the most sympathetic ways.
All of the women in the movie have problems of various kinds. All of them have been hurt.
They band together to help each other.
At first I thought it was going to be a magical realism movie. It isn't. It's about coping with death and violence. It opens with a scene of all the widows at the cemetary cleaning the graves of loved ones.
The other dominating image is the powerful winds of La Mancha.
We understand the effect of winds by seeing a car driving down a road through a wind farm.
The story takes place in a working class neighborhood in Madrid and in an unspecified village some distance away.
I found myself so absorbed in the story that I would forget to read the subtitles. I loved the Castillian Spanish.
The imagery of the widows (we called them 'tanks' when I lived in Spain) was exactly like I remembered.
The other thing I noticed was that even though a number of crimes were committed there was a complete absence of the police. When I was there during the Franco regime the police were omnipresent and oppressive. I think the unwillingness of the characters in the movie to contact the police is a residue of police oppression from 40 years ago. It is also possible that in the masculine world of Spanish tradition, there would have been little sympathy for the crimes of women or of crimes perpetrated upon women so the women handled the situation among themselves without bringing in the authorities.
I don't want to spoil the story by relating any of the plot.
I definitely recommend this movie.
This is a wonderful movie about the world of women. Penelope Cruz is luminous. Brilliant and resourceful. Her character deals with the problems she is presented with in the most sympathetic ways.
All of the women in the movie have problems of various kinds. All of them have been hurt.
They band together to help each other.
At first I thought it was going to be a magical realism movie. It isn't. It's about coping with death and violence. It opens with a scene of all the widows at the cemetary cleaning the graves of loved ones.
The other dominating image is the powerful winds of La Mancha.
We understand the effect of winds by seeing a car driving down a road through a wind farm.
The story takes place in a working class neighborhood in Madrid and in an unspecified village some distance away.
I found myself so absorbed in the story that I would forget to read the subtitles. I loved the Castillian Spanish.
The imagery of the widows (we called them 'tanks' when I lived in Spain) was exactly like I remembered.
The other thing I noticed was that even though a number of crimes were committed there was a complete absence of the police. When I was there during the Franco regime the police were omnipresent and oppressive. I think the unwillingness of the characters in the movie to contact the police is a residue of police oppression from 40 years ago. It is also possible that in the masculine world of Spanish tradition, there would have been little sympathy for the crimes of women or of crimes perpetrated upon women so the women handled the situation among themselves without bringing in the authorities.
I don't want to spoil the story by relating any of the plot.
I definitely recommend this movie.
# posted by blue-foot Sue @ 8:39 AM 
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