Richard and I return to discuss VOLVER (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006), interesting to see always but particularly for Richard now having seen WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (1984) and his earlier films, which he hadn’t seen before, and thus more fully appreciating one of the ‘returns’ in VOVER, that of Carmen Maura. We discuss the recurring motifs: Strong women, dreadful men, female solidarity, rape, relationships between mother and child, cemeteries, a star entrance through a tombstone. We note the evidence of Almodóvar’s rural background, how his films always reference and often feature the rural as setting. Almodóvar is of the few directors to represent rural customs (the white shirts and dark trousers of the men at the funeral); the rural is also evident in his use of dialogue, which feels so true, and adds a particular texture to his films, phrases that are structures of feeling, modes of understanding. We note how this is in tension with the representation of Madrid, often a character of its own in his films, and in this instance, the particular, working-class Madrid neighbourhoods of this film. We discuss the narrative, and how the film creates a world in which death and violence hover, the work of a filmmaker who doesn’t believe in ghosts but is aware of the relevance of the spectral in people’s lives and people’s understandings. The film looks luminous with a depth and texture to the visuals. Flowers turn up significantly in the film, represented in the poster’s design. We can’t think of another director who features rape so recurringly, in this case there’s a parallell rhyming rape of a father/ daughter with significantly different responses from the mothers; we note too how fathers are often shown as abusive, absent, neglectful. We discuss how Almodóvar often structures his story telling around a history of cinema, a telling through allusions, quotations, references to film, here we note how the film evokes Magnani, Loren, MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, 1945), STELLA DALLAS (King Vidor 1937, the Magnani clip in the film is from Visconti’s BELLISSIMA (1951).  Lastly, we tie all of this to the film’s themes: the past, making amends, building bridges, making connections, various kinds of returns.

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Above: From the Madrid: Chica Almodóvar exhibition at the Conde Duque in Madrid. 

José Arroyo