? Pedro Almodóvar’s latest finds three generations of women trying to bury the past (sometimes literally). Penélope Cruz plays the mother, daughter, and sister of the other main characters, and there’s also a husband, an elderly aunt, and an old friend who are part of the story, although not all of them make it through the film alive, and one of them seems to be dead already. The film opens in a cemetery in a town where everyone seems to have superstitions about the departed, and it’s no wonder the heroine has sought refuge in Madrid, where, unfortunately, times are bit tough. Carmen Maura, who worked with Almodóvar six times in the 1980s, costars as the back-from-the-dead mother.
+ Why is Cruz so much more appealing in her native Spanish? I don’t know, but it probably helps that she’s working with her old Live Flesh/All About My Mother director. Almodóvar doesn’t quite return to the earlier days when he made farces like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! but there’s an element of levity missing from the recent Bad Education and Talk to Her. The director has an obvious affection for women characters, who never appear as “types,” but then, neither do any of his characters. You’re not sure where everything is going in this movie, or how everything ties together, but then, at the end, it all makes sense.
- As I’ve suggested, the movie borders on the confusing in the beginning. It took time to become intriguing. The supporting characters are a mixed bag.
= *** This isn’t Almodóvar’s very best movie, but since it strikes a (literally) colorful balance between skillful melodrama and light comedy, it may be a good intro for the uninitiated.
IMDB link
reviewed 1/4/07
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