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Review of Volver
Aug. 26th, 2006 07:58 pmI love the Screen on the Green. Everytime I've been there -- for Amelie & Gosford Park -- they played music before the lights went down which evoked the movie about to be shown. Today, for Almodóvar's Volver, it was no different. The cinema was only half-empty and, despite the space between the chairs being too small, Kevin & I enjoyed ourselves.
I found out last year that I share my birthday with Almodóvar. Even so, I was already biased towards him. The first time I heard of him was when Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown came out, in 1988. A german family lived across the hall from us in São Paulo, and I remember my mom planning a trip to the cinema with the mother -- my mom is also an Almodóvar fan. This left an impression on me of Almodóvar being a director special enough for my mom to dump my brothers & I with my dad while she went out with a friend. Years later I heard that Antonio Banderas had played a gay man in his first film with Almodóvar (Laberinto de Pasiones), and that he wanted desperately for the movie to not be re-released so his budding career in Hollywood wouldn't be hurt. Whenever I go through a videostore's Spanish section, I keep an eye out for this film -- my curiosity won't be satisfied until I see it.
Volver is a very good movie, but not as good as Almodóvar's previous three ones (All About My Mother, Talk To Her and Bad Education). It has less humour and seems to rely almost entirely on Penelope Cruz's performance (which she excel's in -- boy, she must be relieved not to be dating Tom Cruise anymore.) But, the things which I love in his films -- the texture of a character's home, the music, the colours, the melodrama -- were plenty enough to make it one of the best movies I've seen in recent times. Sometimes, it's good to see a film where character comes before explosions.
Speaking of which, the way he told his story made me think of NaNoWriMo. In my previous attempts to write a novel, I thought it was necessary for a semblance of a plot to be in place before I put pen to paper. But Almodóvar seems to work first through characters, letting their personalities build and tell the story. This way, it seems to me that he cares for these people and how they are represented (which might explain why he loves to work with certain actors), and the story doesn't suffer too much from unrealistic plot turns. This has made me think that I should use these months leading up to November to think of a character, or characters, which I'd like to explore, whose story I'd like to tell. I know my NaNoWriMo will turn out to be absurd and silly, but if I'm writing about a character which I care about, it will be less of a struggle for me to finish it.
I found out last year that I share my birthday with Almodóvar. Even so, I was already biased towards him. The first time I heard of him was when Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown came out, in 1988. A german family lived across the hall from us in São Paulo, and I remember my mom planning a trip to the cinema with the mother -- my mom is also an Almodóvar fan. This left an impression on me of Almodóvar being a director special enough for my mom to dump my brothers & I with my dad while she went out with a friend. Years later I heard that Antonio Banderas had played a gay man in his first film with Almodóvar (Laberinto de Pasiones), and that he wanted desperately for the movie to not be re-released so his budding career in Hollywood wouldn't be hurt. Whenever I go through a videostore's Spanish section, I keep an eye out for this film -- my curiosity won't be satisfied until I see it.
Volver is a very good movie, but not as good as Almodóvar's previous three ones (All About My Mother, Talk To Her and Bad Education). It has less humour and seems to rely almost entirely on Penelope Cruz's performance (which she excel's in -- boy, she must be relieved not to be dating Tom Cruise anymore.) But, the things which I love in his films -- the texture of a character's home, the music, the colours, the melodrama -- were plenty enough to make it one of the best movies I've seen in recent times. Sometimes, it's good to see a film where character comes before explosions.
Speaking of which, the way he told his story made me think of NaNoWriMo. In my previous attempts to write a novel, I thought it was necessary for a semblance of a plot to be in place before I put pen to paper. But Almodóvar seems to work first through characters, letting their personalities build and tell the story. This way, it seems to me that he cares for these people and how they are represented (which might explain why he loves to work with certain actors), and the story doesn't suffer too much from unrealistic plot turns. This has made me think that I should use these months leading up to November to think of a character, or characters, which I'd like to explore, whose story I'd like to tell. I know my NaNoWriMo will turn out to be absurd and silly, but if I'm writing about a character which I care about, it will be less of a struggle for me to finish it.
