Volver

This was a very unusual movie. Women were the very prominent and strong characters in the film. The men were portrayed as weak, flawed and ignorant. Penelope Cruz's character, Raimunda, is the center using her beauty, intelligence and sensuality to out trump the men. When her daughter kills her husband her reaction is that of a typical woman, taking the blame for the act and wanting nothing but the best for her daughter.

The tribute to women was demonstrated by the situations of Irene's marriage to her cheating husband. She in the end triumphs after she realizes that her daughter was incestuously impregnated by her husband, and she burns him up and his lover. As a "ghost", Irene helps take care of her Aunt, and wishes to return to her daughters to help them understand that she is responsible for their father's death, because of the horrible crime he commited against Raimunda.

Raimunda also triumphs, repairing the relationship with her daughter, who is really her sister and her daughter because of the incest of her father. She has had a strained relationship with her mother and sister, but during the course of the film she is able to come to closure with her relatives. She was in a horrible marriage, having to support Emilio by working many jobs. He is an alcoholic, and because of his advances to Raimunda's daughter he ends up dead in the deep freeze.

The superstition and real life is also about the name of the movie "Volver", which essentially means the return. Irene comes back from the dead to avenge her troubled marriage and the estrangement of her daughter, Raimunda. She is not really dead but because of the fire, her husband and his lover are mistaken as the couple and are buried together. The beginning of the film also shows a return as the relatives of the dead clean and groom the headstones of their loved ones. Agustina, a friend cleans her own gravestone, and it is said that people do this in this part of Spain because they view their final resting place as a second home....that is some vacation destination.

There is also the superstition of the wind. It is blamed for the fire that burnt Raimunda's family and making people crazy which Agustina is supposed to be because she has cancer but believes that she sees ghosts. Which of course is Raimunda's mother who is not dead.

I enjoyed this movie. Perhaps it was the viewing of powerful women, instead of women that were beaten down by their men. Perhaps it was the great acting by Penelope Cruz, who I think is fantastic, but in actuality, it was just a interesting film that portrayed very powerful ideas, incest, murder and death in a very different way.