A Mother Never Dies. Review on Volver - Spanish Movie

Volver means* “To Return”*.

The earth is round. No matter how much we try to escape from ourselves or our past, it would be futile. The object/subject, which we are trying to run away from, would stand right in front of us before we even realize it, and we’ll have no other choice but to face it. And that’s the best option in life anyways, to face it…

Volveris a film about returning. Returning to one’s roots …one’s family. And whoever says only the living can return. It’s the story of a dead mother who returns to her family to resolve the conflicts that she couldn’t during her lifetime. The film looks at the rich culture of death in Spain and shows how much the dead are a part & parcel of the lives of the people; and how the living & the dead co-exist in mutual harmony.

It’s a film about three generations of women in a family in Madrid and how they all stand up for each other unconditionally despite their personal differences. They are – Irene, the grandmother (Carmen Maura) who returns from death, her sisterPaula(Chus Lampreave), Irene’s two daughters, Sole(Lola Duenas) who earns her living working as a hairdresser and Raimunda(Penelope Cruz) who lives with a jobless drunkard husband Paco(Antonio de la Torre). Raimunda’s teenaged daughterPaula(Yohana Cobo) forms the third generation. The next door neighbour Agustina(Blanca Portillo) too plays an important role in their lives and hence can be included in the second generation.

Everyone is leading their normal course of bittersweet life, till one day, the dead mother, decides to return, after the death of her sister. It’s after this that a bundle of ugly secrets within the family start getting un-layered one after another. The film takes an insightful plunge into that rare virtue called maternity possessed only by women(mostly) along with touching darker issues like infidelity, incest, murder and rape.

Though Volver may seem surreal from the facade, but it’s much beyond that. It’s a movie with a soul. The way the characters balance the fight between the complexities of their current life and the baggage of the past, creates situations sometimes comic but mostly full of intense and deep emotion.

As a minor subplot, the movie also takes a dig at the idiocracy of TV shows and how they take the intelligence of the viewers for granted. I guess the television in Spain is not very much different than our very own desi K entertainment.

Another interesting point that it conveys ingeniously is regarding the neighbours. You can choose your friends and enemies, but you can’t choose your neighbours; and at the times of need a neighbour is in the most advantageous position to help you out, provided you have cordial relations with her/him.

Aren’t the two sub plots a direct whack, at our everyday urban lives? We keep a complete track of how many divorce cases Tulsi files against her umpteen number of husbands, and how many of her children have children outside their marriages; but we have no clue about the favorite color of that cute girl living next door. maybe that's why we don't get songs like "mere saamne vali khidki mein" anymore.

For those who don’t know much about the Director; Pedro Almodovar, is a master when it comes to portraying women on screen. So vast is his knowledge about women psychology, that even the females can learn a lot about themselves, after watching his films. He is so acquainted about the subtleties of female behaviour pattern, that each glance his character gives, each smile the character passes, each tear the character drops, says aplenty & helps the plot progress. When his other colleagues depend on long unending dialogues which fail to elicit even half the effect, Almodovar believes in creating a live breathing woman on screen.

Performance wise, Penelope Cruz, steals the show. It’s her best movie yet. A must watch and a must buy for all her fans. She has looked drop dead gorgeous and has given a performance of a lifetime. No wonder she became the first ever Spanish actress to be nominated for the Oscar Awards. This is what the director had to say about her –

“Penélope Cruz is turning this film into a personal festival. Watching her act every day is a true spectacle for the eyes of the face and the soul. I don’t know who has taken over whom, the character over Penélope or Penélope over the character, but Penélope is Raimunda(the character in the film) as much as Raimunda is Penélope. And for me, being able to witness this fusion, gives me a pleasure which I wouldn’t know how to explain”

It’s also great to see Carmen Maura working with Pedro again after a gap of eighteen years, following their quarrel. The actress hasn’t lost any of her old magic, the proof being her monologue with Penelope Cruz – a difficult scene enacted with an incredible ease.

Volver is not a horror film. It takes a look at the sacrifices a mother makes for her daughter, the misunderstandings that can cause physical & emotional distances between the two - and the healing that can come, even beyond death, from the renaissance and reburial of the past.

It reaffirms that a daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self.  And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.

A mother never dies. A woman may, but a mother never will. The moment the child is born, the mother becomes immortal. And she continues to live forever in the form of the child for child is merely a part of her…