Volver (2006)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Raimunda	Penélope Cruz	½
Irene	Carmen Maura	½
Sole	Lola Dueñas
Agustina	Blanca Portillo	½
Paula	Yohana Cobo
Tia Paula	Chus Lampreave
Paco	Antonio de la Torre

Review

Almodóvar and his women. With Volver he returns to ensemble female casting, continues to depict camp melodrama, and manages largely to convey it all with quality and appeal. His small-town, dysfunctional family of women is written in the vein of Federico García Lorca's play "La Casa de Bernarda Alba". Even the projection can to a degree be claimed to be similarly theatrical, but then one would disregard Almodóvar's incurable skill for visual composition. The colouring in Volver is magnetic to a degree where even a 25 year old Ford Granada looks sexy. Between lighter, at times bordering on pulp, story-twists (and self-consciously so), Volver includes some amazing, dramatically explosive scenes - most of which contains Penélope Cruz in arguably one of her best roles to date (it's a relief to hear her speak Spanish again, by the way). A first-rate performance also comes from the old Almodóvar-favourite Carmen Maura in a film that never threatens to equal the best films of the iconic Spanish auteur's catalogue, but that has enough quality to deserve his much acclaimed seal.