Volver

Volver opens in a cemetery as many women are busy cleaning the graves of loved ones. This puts us on notice that the film revolves around the interaction between life and death. In this part of La Mancha, people expect for the dead to come back from time to time and visit with those left behind. ("Volver" means to come back.) Pedro Almodovar leads us from that idea into a wonderfully done comedy noir.

The story centers on three generations of women: Raimunda and her sister Sole, Raimunda's daughter Paula, and Raimunda's and Paula's mother, Irene, whose grave they have been caring for. After, Raimunda's and Sole's Aunt Paula dies, they hear stories that Irene had been appearing to Aunt Paula and caring for her in her old age. After her funeral, Irene appears in Sole's car and stays with her in her apartment.

In the mean time, Raimunda is busy covering up a murder and running an abandoned restaurant (where she has stashed the body in a freezer.) She is on the verge of moving on with her life, but there are still some unresolved issues.

The film is almost exclusively populated by women. There are a few temporary male roles, but all of the key action is the interaction of women, not only within the family, but a whole network of women of the community. That does not make this a women's movie. It does add a level of understanding. In women we see the source of life. As these women cope with the various incarnations of death in the film, we see that even death can be life giving. Indeed, we see the dead caring for the dying, and in the process bringing life to death.

Between the subject matter, and the score by Alberto Iglesias, there is a certain Hitchcockian feel to Volver. Although this is comedy, it has a dark side because death is always close at hand in some way -- the graveyard, the apparition of Irene, the body in the freezer, a terminal illness. It shows very clearly that death is indeed a part of life.

In online production notes Almodovar says: "I have the impression, and I hope it's not a passing feeling, that I have managed to slot in a piece whose misalignment has caused me a lot of pain and anxiety throughout my life; I would even say that in recent years it had damaged my existence, dramatizing it too much. The piece I am talking about is 'death', not just mine and that of my loved ones but the merciless disappearance of all that is alive. I have never accepted or understood it."

Later he adds: "I never accepted death, I've never understood it. For the first time, I think I can look at it without fear, although I continue to neither understand nor accept it. I'm starting to get the idea that it exists."

Death can certainly be a source of pain. I've been to too many funerals not to accept death, but I doubt I understand it any better than Almodovar. Yet for all his disclaimers about not accepting or understanding it, he has given us a beautiful look at the way life and death are intermingled and give meaning to each other. The opening scene in the graveyard is about the joy of life. When death occurs, it ends up bringing new life to the characters.

Death is an intensely spiritual topic -- perhaps the ultimate spiritual topic. It needs to be seen more than an end of life. In many ways it helps to give meaning to life. Volver is one of the most entertaining and interesting approaches to death (and by extension, life) that has made it to film in recent years.