Critics reviews

Almodóvar's maturity navigates not only the thin lines between comedy and drama and between body and spirit, but also between rebellion and acceptance.

Almodóvar loves all his actors, but he's never seemed as besotted as he does here with Cruz. What he's done with her (and for her, for that matter) feels like a miracle.

Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, from his screenplay (in Spanish, with English subtitles), turns out to be by far the most disciplined narrative film, structurally and stylistically, of the 16 or so that he’s made over the past quarter of a century.

Volver is Almodovar’s world but also his past, and its remarkable warmth is itself evidence that at least one man in La Mancha was loved, and loved well.

Penelope Cruz is witty, wry, and elegant—perhaps more Grace Kelly than Anna Magnani (who’s explicitly referenced in the film when a character watches Visconti’s Bellíssima on TV), but a delight to watch.

Drawing on influences ranging from Latin American telenovelas to classic Hollywood weepies and on an iconography of female endurance that includes Anna Magnani and Joan Crawford, Mr. Almodóvar has made yet another picture that moves beyond camp into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism.

The albatross of Pedro Almodóvar’s flamboyant ‘80s oeuvre will encumber the director as long as he makes films like Volver, which, not unlike Talk to Her, is an exceptionally well-crafted work that never threatens to fabulously and spontaneously combust before our eyes.

This is the key aspect of Almodóvar’s melodrama, in which each detail is accorded its own degree of baroque excess, and each bend in his maze-like plotting is lent the nonchalant air of everyday life.