Review of To Return (1982) by Derek B — 15 Jan 2009

I realise, of course, Pedro Almodovar is revered as a director - but I've never quite "got" his films. The 2 or 3 that I'd seen struck me as too gratuitous, gaudy, lacking in substance. I can't even remember if I watched them all the way through. For a few minutes I was thinking the same thing with Volver. I found it particularly hard to follow the overlapping dialogue, the subtitles were flitting across the screen like a speed-reading test. But after maybe 20 minutes it became clearer that there was something with more depth here. I'm not a lover of Penelope Cruz, and found her persona in this film annoying - abrupt and brusque a lot of the time. As the narrative unfolded this became perfectly understandable.

It's a lovely film, far more subtle than I had expected, glorious in its visual sense, and with some remarkable performances - not least Cruz. What was amazing was how marginal the (very few) male characters were. There were long stretches of screen time which showed no males at all. When you see the film through to its conclusion this makes complete sense.