Spanish Town’s Women Putted Front

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's Volver is warm, emotional and forever on the brink of tears — peppered with bouts of pique, old resentments that flare up and moments of intense and lyrical longing, like most of other homecomings. It told a story about three generations of women survived the east wind, fire, insanity, superstition and even death by means of goodness, lies and boundless vitality.

They are Raimunda (Pénelope Cruz), who is married to an unemployed labourer and has a teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo); Sole (Lola Dueñas), her sister, who makes a living as a hairdresser; and the mother of both (Carmen Maura), who died in a fire along with her husband. This character appears first to her sister (Chus Lampreave) and then to Sole, although the people with whom she has some unresolved matters are Raimunda and her neighbor in the village, Agustina (Blanca Portillo).

Volver means return. The director Almodóvar has cast himself as the chronicler of the Spanish soul, and in "Volver" he deftly weaves the old Spain with the new. The town, now a klatch of superstitious biddies, is in many ways itself a friendly ghost of the past. As arid and wind-swept as ever, the countryside of La Mancha is dotted with wind turbines instead of Quixotic windmills, though this obvious sign of modernity has done nothing to curb the high incidence of fires and madness in the region Cervantes made famous. Meanwhile, the director has said himself that, for him, returning to La Mancha is like returning to the maternal bosom. Volver is a title that includes several kinds of coming back for him. The director has come back, a bit more, to comedy with people like Carmen Maura and Penélope Cruz who he used to work with. He has come back to the female world, to La Mancha, to maternity, as the origin of life and of fiction, and naturally, has come back to his mother. Nevertheless, there was more than coming back presented in the movie.

It is said that Volver is a good combination of comedy and melodrama, but it is not a defacto surrealistic comedy although it may seem so at times. The living and the dead coexist without any discord, causing situations that are either hilarious or filled with a deep, genuine emotion. It's a film about the culture of death in my native La Mancha. The people there practice it with an admirable naturalness, which could not be a better explanation of natural way of treating death in Spanish culture. The way in which the dead continue to be present in their lives, the richness and humanity of their rites mean that the dead never die. Volver is a tribute to the social rites practiced by the people of those Spanish villages with regard to death and the dead. People talk of the dead, cultivate their memory and tend their graves constantly. Like the character of Agustina in the film, many of them look after their own grave for years, while they are alive. They have the optimistic feeling on deaths, and it can also be observed from Mexican Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) which was intended in prehispanic Mexico to celebrate children and the dead. It is considered to be the best way for Mexican families to remember their dead, and to appreciate the continuity of life.

On the other hand, with all those bright but loopy humor, Volver is also complex but sanguine, destroying all the arguements about "black" Spain and offers a Spain that is as real as it is the opposite. A Spain shown here is white, spontaneous, funny, intrepid, supportive and fair, and real Spanish town’s women’s life is presented naturally. In Volver, Rainmuda is settled to be throughout the film. Based on the force field that seems to surround Raimunda, some people insist that subtly padded and pushed-up, here eyes lined and ears hoped like Carmen, and since then, she is like a striking symbol of Spanish feminine. Truly, in the movie, no matter Raimunda, or Augstina, or even Abuela Irene-the “dead” can all be treated like representatives of Spanish feminine. However, apart from the resembling make-ups they wore, Raimunda has no more things to do with Carmen. In fact, people may all have assumption that Carmen symbolizes the indomitable and passionate spirit of Spanish women. But if we examine them carefully, it is obvious that Carmen, although from time to time Spanish society generates stories that seem to indicate she is still alive around (typically criminal cases), can never represent other feminine from the country with “erotic turbulence” or sensual, either from Bizet’s opera or from Prosper Mérimée’s novella. Married to an unemployed labourer who was perennially drunk, she had nothing to do but tolerate in silence. Referring to a census conducted in EU in 2003, work was considerably more important to men than women with 43% of men including this in their three most important aspects of life compared with just 35% of women. Also, Spain is notable with 48% among this group with 39% average. Since then, there is no doubt that the confliction exists in Raimunda’s family in the film. Only when the father who wanted to sleep with their adolescent daughter ended up with killed by the teenager daughter in self-defense, Raimunda must save her daughter; that has to be her priority. She was looking for a place to bury her husband and she decides to do it on the banks of the river where they met as children. It seems to be a bit tricky, but the river, like the graphics of any transport, like tunnels or endless passageways, is one of many metaphors for time, and can be looked at as another “return” for the couple.

It is also reported that 82% of citizens felt that the family was the most important aspect of their lives. 86% of women as opposed to 79% of men believed that the family was one of the three most important aspects of their lives. Still, Spain is notable with 89% higher than EU’s average, and as people get older, they also give the family a higher rating. That can explain the story happened in Volver, and the mysteries involved with Irene’s returning back. Volver is a film about family, and the family in it is a family of women. Sole and Raimunda’s is a migrant family which came from a village to a big city in search of prosperity. To this type of family, a phenomenon that people will suffer from integrating themselves into the current society. They will keep their inheritance from home culture anyway. Problems are tending to be provoked especially between generates among a family, and that can be a possibility of the un-finished issue between Raimunda and Irene. There is a long sequence in the script of Volver, almost a monologue, because only Irene, the grandmother's ghost, speaks. In this sequence, Irene explains to her beloved daughter, Raimunda, the reasons for her death and return, over the course of six intense pages and six equally intense shots. Just like what is described in a song by Chavela: "you always go back to the old places where you loved", Irene returned back, and unsolved issues were solved.

Spanish people appreciate having a harmonious neighborhood. In the film Volver, Agustina represents a very important element this female universe: the solidarity of neighboring women. The women in the village spread out problems, they share them. And they manage to make life much more bearable. The opposite also happens (the neighbor who hates the neighbor and stores his hatred from generation to generation until one day the tragedy explodes and even they don't know why). In fact, Volver pays tribute to the supportive neighbor, that unmarried or widowed woman who lives alone and makes the life of the old lady next door her own life.

That is how the characters and relationships in Volver seem to me, a true Spain with a group of real Spanish feminine. Death is not inhibited; people treat it naturally and even show their respect and appreciation. Compliant and headstrong women live together, raising up and resolving problems. They come to us, vulnerable and lost, to ask us for help, but they will keep doing it in their own way. They don't realize, but that is the strange, wonderful path they follow to reach the goodness. And then, what can be told to them? It doesn't matter what happens to them, what they suffer, what strange, terrible things may happen to them, we are not the ones to judge them. People living in totally different backgrounds without their ominous misfortune and happiness could never gain the rights. What is more, they are the ones who could judge us, even though we know they never will, because they are not obsessed with justice but with love. And the best thing they can do is to continue being as they are.

That is how I see the movie, like a tale, but real. There are terrible things in tales: people being chopped up, children who are abandoned in a forest, fierce creatures who devour human flesh... Women are neither flabby nor violent, and even definitely not sensual. The most extreme has a place in them, and yet, alongside that horror, there is always that rare thing we call innocence. It is very hard to define if it is correct, and there is nothing easier to identify when it appears and what it is. That is the part what art exists to pursue, and that is also what those women survive to pursue.