"VOLVER" ,STUDY GUIDE.
-Introduction. As a media text, the film deals with themes such as gender identities, families, representations of social taboos and narratives of migration and memory. As a genre it mixes elements from comedy, the thriller, fantasy and melodrama.
-Credits
"Volver"
Spain 2006
Written and Directed by Pedro Almodvar Produced by Agustn Almodvar and Esther Garca for El Deseo S.A., Canal+, Ministerio de Cultura, TVE Original Music by Alberto Iglesias Volver interpreted by Estrella Morente Cinematography by Jos Luis Alcaide Production Design by Salvador Parra Set Decoration by Mara Matey Costume Design by Sabine Daigeler Sound: Miguel Rejas and Jos Antonio Bermdez Runtime: 120 minutes
Leading players
Penlope Cruz - Raimunda Carmen Maura - Irene, mother of Raimunda and Sole Lola Dueas - Sole Blanca Portillo - Agustina Yohana Cobo - Paula, daughter of Raimunda Chus Lampreave - Aunt Paula Antonio de la Torre - Paco, husband of Raimunda
PEDRO ALMODOVAR
Pedro Almodvar was born in a village in La Mancha, the rural heartland of Spain. When his schooling was complete he left for Madrid where he struggled to make enough money to give himself the chance to learn filmmaking. This was the late 1960s and Spain was still a highly repressive fascist state led by General Franco. For over thirty years Spain had been effectively cut off from the social changes in the rest of Western Europe. When Franco died in 1975, Spain moved towards an open democracy and people began to realise the possibilities of freedom. Almodvar became part of a radical arts movement in Madrid known as La Movida. He began to make experimental films and to produce comic strips and articles for various publications. Almodvars first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom, appeared in 1980. Unlike many other Spanish filmmakers, Almodvar appeared, at this time, not to be interested in making comments about the previous forty years and the struggle against fascism. Since 1980 Almodvar has completed a further fifteen films in a career that can be roughly divided into three periods. In the first,
Almodvar gradually moved from very low budget experimental films to something approaching mainstream features, helped by the formation of his own production company Deseo (Desire), formed with his brother Augustin in 1985. Popular in Madrid, it wasnt until 1988s Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown that Almodvar achieved major success abroad, with the result that his earlier films were then given a limited release in the UK. After 1988, Almodvars films all received an international release, gradually becoming more controlled and less extravagant in terms of presentation, but still, by mainstream standards, anarchic. This was the second period. In 1999 the huge international success pushed Almodvar to a new level as perhaps the most important European filmmaker with a loyal audience eagerly anticipating each new film. More perhaps than most filmmakers, Almodvar has maintained a clear personal vision throughout his career. His films are partly biographical as in the portrayal of a Jesuit education in Bad Education, or as in Volver, the move to Madrid from La Mancha. The central characters of most of his films are strong women, drawing partly on memories of childhood with his family and at the cinema, watching Hollywood and European melodramas or womens pictures. Visually, Almodvars films are dominated by bold colours and startling designs with attention to music and the arts in general. His films also often include performers singers, actors, television personalities etc.
THE FILM ,"VOLVER"
Volver means to return, to come back and the film represents a return by Almodvar in a number of ways: -a personal return to stories about mothers and women in general after two male-centred films. -a professional return to work with the major star of the first period of his career, Carmen Maura and to Penlope Cruz, returning from America.
a return narrative with two women going back to the Manchegan village they, like Almodvar, left for Madrid.
MIGRATIONS AND CASTILLA-LA MANCHA
Spain is a large European country, made up of seventeen autonomous communities. Castille-La Mancha is one of three autonomous communities surrounding Madrid in the centre of Spain. It is one of the largest in area, but sparsely populated and predominantly agricultural. La Mancha is most famous for the story of Don Quixote written by Cervantes at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The most important character in Spanish literature, Don Quixote is a fantasist who takes on the world, imagining himself as a medieval knight seeking justice and tilting at windmills. Almodvar references this with several shots of modern wind turbines. La Mancha is also famous for manchego cheese and manchegan wine, again referenced here in the importance of the food parcels which go back to Madrid. The geography of the region the wind and the heat on the dry, high plateaux, the sense of isolation has helped to create a sense of rural Castille as cut off, out of time and perhaps prone to superstition. Many films deal with the process of migration leaving one place to live in another, for positive (a better life) or negative (to escape a terrible life) reasons. The movement of people from the village in La Mancha to Madrid is central to Volver. Although we learn that it is only 180 kilometres from the Madrid suburb to the village, it seems further in time as well as geography. The hard work that Raimunda must put in to keep her family together links her in Almodvars eyes to the strong women he remembered from his childhood, both around him in his family and on the cinema screen.
ALMODOVAR,GENRE AND TABOOS
One of the most interesting aspects of Volver, and of Almodvars career generally, is how he manages to deal with social taboos. Partly this is concerned with his selection from different genre repertoires in presenting his narratives. This presentation has changed significantly over the twenty-six years in which he has been releasing feature films, but it is still related to the presentation of controversial material. Much of this depends on audience responses. There are many audiences, in Spain and abroad, who find Almodvars films funny, enjoyable and positively delightful. Others are shocked by the inclusion of material that does not seem to be treated seriously. There is also the possibility that audiences will react differently to Almodvar himself and his persona as a gay man with a camp sensibility. (Camp is a term with various meanings, some of which refer to ideas about excessive forms of artistic work or kitsch and others to both positive and negative views of gay culture, especially in terms of exaggerated effeminacy.) In his earlier films, Almodvar would simply juxtapose shocking and mundane scenes. Crucial to his work has been the decision to approach all such scenes with a calm matter of factness.
