Review: Volver

After the male-centric “Bad Education,” Pedro Almodóvar returns to his origins in the village of La Mancha, south of Madrid, to weave a smashing black comedy from the stories of three generations of women (including Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas), mostly comprised of the grief men have caused them. The complications are absurd, consistently melodramatic, rinsed in bold colors and bolder tears. Poker-faced reactions to cancer, rape, murder and fleshy ghosts are accompanied by Almodóvar’s movie madness. While “Volver” is a close relation to Michael Curtiz’s black-hearted noir “Mildred Pierce,” with hints of Hitchcock (with bursts of Bernard Herrmann-like score and some savor of “Psycho”) and the director himself has mentioned “Arsenic and Old Lace” for its dotty dames with a knack for murder. But the work isn’t pastiche, unless it’s of his own brash filmography.  Promoting the film, Almodóvar has made a point of bragging on the prosthetic ass that Cruz was fitted with. Cruz is a tiny woman, but bold, brave, bravura and very, very large on screen even without the ripe bottom. However imperfect the complications of “Volver” are, Cruz’s performance is a heartbreaker. Unlike the bunkum she’s been tucked into in the US, and more like her feral turn in 2004’s Italian “Don’t Move,” Cruz and Almodóvar’s collaboration in “Volver” is a return to form. José Luis Alcaine’s widescreen cinematography is dear. 120m. (Ray Pride)