Truth twenty-four times a second

As a Netflix subscriber, I don't have the time to review every movie I see, nor could I reasonably expect anybody out there to give a flying one about what I thought about Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (it's fantastic, BTW). Still, there are some movies out there worthy of mention, so look for this to become an occasional series. Ironically enough, the post title comes from Jean-Luc Godard, none of whose films I've ever come close to enjoying. Oh well.

Last night, we caught Volver, by Pedro Almadóvar at our local art theatre. I'm rather a big fan of his, having seen just about everything he's done except for a few of the 1980's madcap gender-confused semi-erotic farces that I can never entirely keep straight. The first NC-17 movie I ever saw was Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, back when I was a 15-year-old college freshman. Suffice it to say, the movie really deserved a run of the mill R-rating, but I gained a love for Spanish cinema that lasts to this day. More recently, Almadóvar has taken to more focused but equally as bizarre stories, mostly focusing on strange relationships and love polygons, most recently with the paralyzed (Live Flesh), comatose (Talk to Her) or the transgendered (Bad Education). This film, like All About My Mother, is about as straightforward as he gets as a director because it features what he does better than just about any director in the world: write and film movies that give actresses a chance to shine. By reputation Almadóvar, who is gay, does a better job in directing women than men, and this is especially true when it comes to relationships. His men often come off either as caricature or farce, whereas the women are strong and multi-dimensional. Here, his primary muses are Penélope Cruz, who, as many people on the internet have noted, is a vastly better actress in Spanish than in English (just compare Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky), and the wonderful Carmen Maura, who last acted for Almadóvar in his best film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This is clearly a film of and about women; there are four male speaking roles as best I could count, with at most 10 lines of dialogue in the entire film.

Instead, this is a story about the lives of families, the secrets that are kept and sometimes repressed, and the ways in which experiences are passed on down the generations. Throughout, he makes the interesting choice to let the audience see the twists before the characters themselves; in many ways the plot twists are not important in and of themselves, but as events to which the characters must react. Impressively, Cruz is given a somewhat unsympathetic part to play, up until we learn the role played by her past. As a result, her part manages to achieve nuance without the mawkishness demanded by the standard American dramatic formula. Maura, as her mother, is given the lead role for much of the comedy, but always with a bittersweet edge. Still, as films go, this one is a true pleasure to watch, an underrated factor in movie-watching. Too often, I can't bring myself to watch a great film because I know it will be godawful depressing (Babel fits this category), occasionally missing out on a movie that I had misjudged before seeing it. City of God, the most engaging story of death and poverty in the slums of Brazil ever filmed, thankfully avoided the latter fate. Volver is not a 'happy" film, and touches on any number of truly dark subjects, but it manages to treat its actresses and their daily troubles with a great deal of respect while allowing its audience an enjoyable two hours of cinema. It's worth going out and seeing if it plays near you. Otherwise, rent Women On The Verge and All About My Mother and wait for it to come out on DVD.