Volver: A Feast of Banalities
-(husband in bed, trying to kiss and fondle unresponsive wife) Are you angry?
-(wife, just back from the village) No, I’m worried about my aunt.
(Sudden off-screen heavy breathing, the said horny husband masturbating instead)
If you think this is not frank, daring movie imagery, I share your feelings. This is pathetic, particularly as an attempt at depraved but electrifying humor. Also, Penelope Cruz never takes her gypsy earrings off during this or any other scene in this brocade of laughable clichés and phony intimacy by way of a small pee here, a little fart there. Or the close-ups of garbage pales that litter the footage between those of a bloodied knife, the making of crème caramel and gratuitous overhead shots of the star’s pushed up breasts. Dear girl even sings a spontaneous song in an inn she spontaneously opened for a film crew that appeared spontaneously while her husband rests inside a freezer after trying to rape her daughter and having found himself at the receiving end of the youngster’s kitchen knife. A spontaneous girl, all smiles, having a terrific time, sad only about the absence of castanets and a rose between guitar players’ teeth while mother lip-syncs a very moving song. Though not apparently about the bloody murder she perpetrated hours earlier, with a bit of luck the subject of a real movie one day.
This film, very widowy, very province, is a feeble attempt at a slice of Bernarda Alba’s house and Garcia Lorca’s heavy duty drama, but then it is full of slices of this and slices of that by way of awkward transition in a desperate attempt to cash in on Penelope Cruz incomprehensible popularity. VOLVER is the name of the song, plus of course it means the ‘Returning’ of a dead and buried mother whose ghost is matter-of-factly asked by Penelope’s sister “Oh Hi Mom, is there anything you want me to do that you couldn’t do in life?†but who turns out to be very much kicking and helping out same sister in her beauty salon, making that query somewhat astonishing.
In other words, too much dark brown Spanish cuteness, mainly for the benefit of foreign viewers some of who might have visited Torremolinos, in school read all about bulls by a chap named Hemingway, and who are now handed this VOLVER fodder. What are they to make of Spain? Is this it? The problem being that this is not a comedy; it has the premise of a comedy but erroneously aspires to serious drama while failing utterly mainly because this premise contains so much derisory expediency. Even then this work is at least 40 minutes too long, padded with detail of absolutely no interest, including a puzzling ongoing struggle to get rid of the body of the rapist husband. And there’s been a similar incident with a grandfather, way back. The score: Incestuous Rapes 2 - Movie 0, but at least we’re spared the sight of a sobbing mother and daughter led away by some dutiful Guardia Civil policeman, straight to jail. You see, that would have been too predictable… Clever devils, writers these!
Ghosts don’t cry, says the little girl’s returned-from-death grandmother. But they do, they do, especially when trapped inside an insipid movie leaving one with nothing but a totally miscast star, too pretty to be a sloven peasant and too mechanical despite buckets of onions induced tears. It is clear to any serious film buff that Penelope Cruz cannot carry a movie, her doe eyes and sultry lips better suited perhaps for even shallower TV situation comedy. As for Mr Almodovar, he seems to have nothing left after his neurosis based cinema and has sunk to the thrilling art of a successful Spanish businessman. Any award nomination here’s completely out of line, a reVOLVER’s what I’d like to get. Or better still Visconti’s immortal The Leopard, now there for you is noble cinematic craft dealing with provincial decadence.
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