Penelope Cruz Movie:

		List Price: $38.96		Label: Sony Pictures Salesrank: 27793 Released: April 3, 2007
		Our Price: $17.50
		Used Price: $13.45
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
From two-time Academy Award®-winner Pedro Almodovar (2003, Best Original Screenplay, Talk to Her; 2000, Best Foreign Language Film, All About My Mother) comes Volver, a comedic and compassionate tribute to women and their resilience in the face of life's most outrageous tribulations. A luminous Penelope Cruz leads an ensemble of gifted actresses, including Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Raimunda (Cruz) and her sister Sole lost their parents in a tragic fire years ago, or did they? Superstitious villagers claim that the girls departed mother, Irene (Maura), has been seen wandering around their Aunt Paula's home. When Irene appears to Sole, she explains that she has returned to set right her daughters' troubled lives and reveal shocking secrets that will impact everyone! Raimunda has "female troubles" of her own, least of which is a corpse in the freezer! Winner of numerous film festival and critics' awards, Volver is a hilarious tale of love, loss and forgiveness.

Description of Volver [Blu-ray]:
Spanish for "Coming Back," Volver is a return to the all-female format of All About My Mother. Unlike Pedro Almodóvar's previous two pictures, the story revolves around a group of women in Madrid and his native La Mancha. (The cast received a collective best actress award at Cannes.) Raimunda (a zaftig Penélope Cruz) is the engine powering this heartfelt, yet humorous vehicle. When husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) is murdered, Raimunda makes like Mildred Pierce to deflect attention away from daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo). After telling everyone the lout has left, she struggles to conceal his body. The other women in her life all have secrets of their own. Her sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas), for instance, has taken in their mother, Irene (a sprightly Carmen Maura). Since Irene perished in a fire, is this person a ghost or simply a woman who looks like her? Then there's their childhood friend, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who is desperate to find out why her mother disappeared after the blaze. Was she responsible? Almodóvar deftly blends the ghost story with the murder mystery in his tribute to the Italian neo-realist films of the 1950s. The resilient Raimunda is a throwback to the earthy heroines of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. The latter appears in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima, which shows up on Sole's television one night (thus confirming the link). If Almodóvar’s 16th feature lacks the emotional punch of the more audacious Talk to Her, it's less heavy-handed than Bad Education and Cruz is a revelation. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Volver [Blu-ray] Reviews:
story of women, frequently mezmerizing
2009-10-31 - This is a movie about women. Men rarely appear and when they do are usually loutish and brutish. The women seem completely self-sufficient, mutually supportive, brave and resourceful.

The memorable opening scene makes the point. Women from a village in the Spanish plains are busy polishing and cleaning their husbands' headstones and tombs. The camera widens and we see scores and scores of women.

Penelope Cruz gives a wonderful performance. Her presence lights up the screen even when she is seen weeping bitterly. At such moments, she looks almost haggard but her inner beauty shines through.

Cruz is at the fulcrum of this movie. I don't want to disclose any surprises so I'll simply say the story concerns three generations of women, all of whom have to overcome the trauma of ill-treatment by men. They do so by painfully uniting.

The photography is frequently arresting and the story engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

How not to dispose of a freezer
2009-03-01 - Volver is a restrained effort from this often flamboyant director. Unfortunately it's also one of his weakest. Uncharacteristically, Almodovar seems unsure both of himself and his themes and this is reflected in a rather flat and stunted script. None of the threads touched upon are developed enough to give the movie a true sense of direction. It is, however, redeemed somewhat by the performances. Penelope Cruz, in particular, is impressive. Overall a disappointment when compared to Almodovar's other work.

Volver - Blu-ray Info
2008-12-19 - Version: U.S.A / Sony / Region A
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
MPEG-2 BD-50
Running time: 2:01:05
Movie size: 29,26 GB
Disc size: 35,20 GB
Total bit rate: 32.23 Mbps
Average video bit rate: 25.06 Mbps

LPCM Audio Spanish 4608 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4608 kbps / 16-bit
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / Dolby Surround

Subtitles: English / English SDH
Number of chapters: 16

#Audio commentary
#The Making of Volver (8 min)
#Director and Cast Interviews
--Director/writer Pedro Almodovar (10 min)
--Actress Penélope Cruz (5 min)
--Actress Carmen Maura (8 min)
#Tribute to Penelope Cruz (AFI interview) (17 min)
#Photo gallery
#Poster gallery
#Bonus trailers (HD)

Blu Ray Review
2008-11-04 - This review isn't about the movie. Sorry. You can read all the other reviews for that. The picture quality is very good but I'm disappointed in format/screen size they used. It's not 16x9. So the movie is still in letterbox form even on an HD widescreen tv. There aren't that many extra features either.

Scenes in search of a movie
2008-09-10 - I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan of Almodovar's films, but I usually do enjoy watching them. My ambivalence towards him stems from the fact that, on the one hand, his movies tend to be messy works that try to do way too much. It's as if Almodovar is so bursting with creative energy and ideas that he just can't discipline himself to do one movie at a time, and instead tries to cram three or four into one. But, on the other hand, if one focuses on the scenes in each of the movies instead of the whole film, Almodovar's genius is sometimes breathtaking. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful scripts, superb acting. So my modus operandi for watching Almodovar these days is appreciating the scenes and forgetting about the coherency of the movie.

Volver is a mess, but a beautiful one. In an accompanying interview, Almodovar himself somewhat incredibly says that the film is about death: "it is precisely about death...More than about death itself, the screenplay talks about the rich culture that surrounds death in the region of La Mancha, where I was born. It is about the way (not tragic at all) in which various female characters, of different generations, deal with this culture." Most viewers, I suspect, won't have picked up on this, because, typically, death is only one of several themes. Others include mother-daughter relationships, incest, sexual abuse, friendship, and independent women. But forget all that, and focus on the scenes. The opening one of La Mancha women cleaning gravestones is one of the best to be found in an Almodovar film. Equally brilliant are the restaurant scenes. The final ones, in which Maura and Raimunda discuss the horrible family secret, truly mars the entire film. The secret has an incredible ring of falsity, and saps authenticity from what's gone before it.

Generally, the acting in "Volver" is superb. But for my money, the laurel goes to Lola Duenas for her portrayal of sister Sole.