Revolver Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)November 21st, 2006
VOLVER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
So little happens in VOLVER that it's hard to know what to say about it. By vastly overrated Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar (BAD EDUCATION), VOLVER is a slightly quirky and slightly poignant slice of life tale starring Penélope Cruz.
As Raimunda, Cruz plays a woman whose husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre) has just been fired. Since he drinks beer and watches soccer on the television at night while Raimunda toils away in the kitchen, I assume we are supposed to instantly detest him. But our feelings for him are immaterial, since he is shortly seen lusting after his own daughter and then dead in the next scene, after his daughter tells her mother that she killed him for coming on to her. The mother instructs the daughter to tell anyone who asks -- no one ever does -- that the mother did it.
Since a clarinet warbles in the background with whimsical murder mystery music, we figure the movie must be headed into Hitchcock territory, but it isn't. Once Raimunda gets her hubby in a freezer, Paco is pretty much forgotten until she decides to move the freezer later in the story.
Irene (Carmen Maura), Raimunda's mother, is dead, but this tragedy turns out not to be a problem after all when she returns from the dead. Later, we learn that she never was a ghost and that the reports of her death were premature.
The middle section of the movie concerns Raimunda's opening of a restaurant that she doesn't actually own in order to feed a crew who is in town making a movie. Of course, there is a handsome guy heading up the crew, but nothing much comes of a potential romance.
In the last act, a deep dark family secret is revealed by Irene. But, since the story never gave us any reason to care about the characters, this surprise, which comes completely out of the blue, has no impact whatsoever. >From start to finish, there is just nothing to VOLVER.
VOLVER runs a long 2:01. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. It is rated R for "some sexual content and language" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Wednesday, November 22, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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