One can understand why he might want to take a lighter approach to such material, but on the whole, the treatment by Almodóvar of his characters seems lacking in real empathy-they are largely two-dimensional creations whose fate we never truly come to care about. The director professes that his latest film is more than a little autobiographical in that it involves something of a review of his own childhood and so is supposedly intensely personal, but that, unfortunately, is something one learns from his interviews rather than the film itself. Even Volver, which is one of his lighter works, touches on a range of painful personal themes-the loss of a loved one, marital infidelity, financial difficulty, etc., but from a far too comfortable angle and with a tidy resolution that tends to trivialize the events. Though his choices may lend drama of a sort to his work, they mask an unwillingness or inability to probe the more difficult, if commonplace problems of life.
Such self-generated comparisons are a little unseemly they also give the film more credit than it deserves.Īlmodóvar’s work deals largely with unusual problems of unusual characters in unusual situations. He remains nevertheless inflated in his own estimation, referring to his film as a meeting of Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945) and Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). It might appear that with Volver Almodóvar is taking himself a little less seriously than his admirers in the industry, which would come as something of a relief. With the release of Volver, which won best screenplay at Cannes last year, along with best actress award for the entire female cast led by Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar’s films continue to garner a measure of praise that is remarkable for its excess.
Pedro Almodóvar is the most prominent Spanish filmmaker currently working. Volver, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar