Volver: Critic Reviews

Watching Volver, Pedro Almodovar's latest poker-faced extravagance, you realize just how far his women have come from the days when they were living on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Pedro Almodóvar has made yet another picture that moves beyond camp into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism.

A touching, beautifully plotted film, full of memorable images and jokes, it zips along without a wasted second in its 121 minutes.

Volver is suspenseful, clever, gently funny and always emotionally resonant.

A deeply entertaining experience that engages our hearts as well as our funny bones.

Pity Pedro Almodovar. He's so good so often that the world has come to expect a masterpiece with every new picture.

Red, in every conceivable shade, is, not surprisingly, a key color in Volver, a movie about the towering virtues of high heels and the indomitable power of good old 35mm celluloid.

For a black comedy whose tangled sequence of events is completely improbable, Pedro Almodovar's Volver feels absolutely authentic. So, think of everything as metaphor and enjoy one of the year's most delectably twisted treats.

From the very first shot of Volver... you know you're in masterful hands.

The Return rattles its chains for a spell, but it doesn't linger -- it quickly leaves.

Ripe with female characters and embroidered with flourishes that hint at Hollywood's Golden Age, Volver is one of Almodovar's finest films. It is also one of his most emotionally delightful.

What a run this millennium for Pedro Almodovar: one strange and fabulous feature after the next, each in a different style, each so deftly controlled that you hardly register its subversiveness until after you've been hooked by its story.

...The film, against my wishes, left me unmoved.

What a distinctive filmmaker Almodovar has become.

The pleasures of the new Pedro Almodovar film Volver, and they are many, have less to do with deep wells of feeling than they do with mastery of craft and a magnificent sort of artifice.

[A] gritty melodrama tempered by surreal black humor.

Pedro Almodovar whipstitches a movie from patches of those mother-daughter melodramas Mildred Pierce, Bellissima and Two Women and makes it seamless and original, funny as it is fierce, breathtaking as it is life-affirming.

The Cannes Film Festival jury threw up its hands and gave this year's Best Actress Award to all six of the film's stars. They're so fine that refusing to choose between them was the only sensible choice.

Volver is rich, crazy, ambitious and filled with heaven and earth in a way that no other filmmaker can touch. It is a flawed beauty, but the beauty is so much more important than the flaws.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar always has fun toying with our perceptions and expectations and does it yet again with Volver, a darkly comic look at mortality and family secrets.

The late Francois Truffaut was frequently described as a filmmaker who loved women, but not even Monsieur Truffuat could come close to Senor Almodovar in his intelligent, perceptive and creative appreciation of women in Volver.

Once again, the director confronts women on the verge of a nervous breakdown in a film full of humor and affection.

Richly evocative.

Almodovar milks this premise for all it's worth with witty dialogue, terrific performances -- and less-flamboyant-than-usual visuals that are still a red-accented treat for the eye.

It's clever and entertaining. It's marvelously deft, but never daffy. It works well enough, despite feeling like the most conventional film this great, envelope-pushing Spanish director has ever made.