Volver

Newsweek David Ansen

The great Spanish director's fourth triumph in a row--following "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "Bad Education"--Volver (which means "coming back") flows effortlessly between peril and poignancy, the real and the surreal, even life and death.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Volver is Almodovar's passionate tribute to the community of women -- living and dead -- who nurtured him. Through the transformative power of his art -- carried on the wings of Alberto Iglesias' exhilarating score -- we feel their presence. You do not want to miss this one.

USA Today Claudia Puig

With this, possibly his most subdued film, Almodo´var reinforces his status as one of the most distinctive and talented filmmakers working today.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Crammed with outrageous turns of fortune and quicksilver shifts in tone, Almodovar's film is held together by performances so subtle and complex it's hard to single out only one as exceptional. But Cruz is astonishing.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is refreshing to see Cruz acting in the culture and language that is her own. As it did with Sophia Loren in the 1950s, Hollywood has tried to force Cruz into a series of show-biz categories, when she is obviously most at home playing a woman like the ones she knew, grew up with, could have become.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Almodóvar is still one of the few directors worth watching just for how he uses color on the screen. But the pleasures have always run much deeper, and now they run deeper still.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

In Volver, the latest marvel to emerge from his sharp and joyful mind, Almodovar blends autobiography, gossip, melodrama, music, the supernatural and the suffocatingly quotidian in a story about a woman -- indeed, a tribe of women -- struggling through a life of pain and disappointment.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This all makes for a deeply entertaining experience that engages our hearts as well as our funny bones. And it's gratifying to see Cruz finally get her due.

Slate Dana Stevens

Penélope Cruz, who's been so painful to watch in English-language roles over the past few years, reminds us that she really can act; she just can't act speaking phonetic dialogue. In her native language she's witty, wry, and elegant.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Volver, full of surprises and reversals, unfolds with breathtaking ease and self-confidence. It is in some ways a smaller, simpler film than either "Talk to Her" or "Bad Education," choosing to tell its story without flashbacks or intricate parallel plots, but it is no less the work of a master.

Village Voice Rob Nelson

Almodóvar isn't what he used to be (who is?), but he's a master of the medium nevertheless, deploying color and light and shadow not merely to express emotions but to tap into ours, directing the blood flow of the audience as much as he directs the movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Part noir-comedy, part ghost story, but it's mostly a potent reflection on how where we come from shapes us, in ways we can't understand until we've been away for a long, long while.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

It's very difficult to mesh fantasy with reality, but with great charm and a light touch, Almodovar shows exactly how it should be done.

Variety Jonathan Holland

Peopled with superbly drawn, attractive characters smoothly integrated into a well-turned, low-tricks plotline, Volver may rep Almodovar's most conventional piece to date, but it is also his most reflective, a subdued, sometimes intense and often comic homecoming that celebrates the pueblo and people that shaped his imagination.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Described as a cross between "Mildred Pierce" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" by Almodóvar - which ought to be more than enough to entice his fans.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

You always get more than one genre with this filmmaker. Volver draws upon all sorts of influences -- a little Hitchcock, a little Douglas Sirk, a little telenovela -- but from those sources Almodovar and his collaborators, both on screen and behind the camera, make an improbably organic whole.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Volver brims with personal and cinematic allusions, but no one hungry for a well-told tale from a master storyteller is required to understand them.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

As down-to-earth as a ghost story gets.

Premiere Jenni Miller

Each scene is lovingly crafted, with bright colors and the beautiful scenery of La Mancha, the mellifluous cadences of Castilian Spanish, and of course the faces, young and old, of each actress.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Funny as it is fierce, breathtaking as it is life-affirming.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Penelope Cruz is sensational in Volver - she's its lifeblood, its raison d'etre and its meaning.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Cruz is tough and sexy as the no-nonsense Raimunda and she's being deservedly talked up for an Oscar nomination in a tight best actress year.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

I have always felt that Almodóvar was at his best as an artist when he was at his most playful. Volver is about deadly serious matters of the heart, but it often has a screwball spirit. The darker things are, the funnier.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Volver is just as funny as "What Have I Done," but it's also more sanguine and complex. Its humor is brighter and loopier, more a function of the characters' indomitable spirit than of their terminal despair.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It's hard to say if Volver is a great film -- hard because every woman and girl in it is so damned endearing (the men are either impediments or bystanders to the real business of life) -- but safe to say it's right up there with Mr. Almodóvar's best.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Before it loses its fizz--maybe two thirds of the way through--Volver offers the headiest pleasures imaginable.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie opens as borderline Hitchcock, echoing the tone of the filmmaker's bravura "Bad Education" (2004), and then turns into a kind of overly conceptualized Tennessee Williams.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Although Volver has a tendency to stray too far down tangential paths, it is ultimately satisfying.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Lower your expectations going into Volver and accept it for what it is: a ridiculously entertaining melodrama with loud echoes of "Mildred Pierce" that provides Penelope Cruz with a vehicle for her multifaceted talents.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

One of the amazing things about Volver is that Almodóvar once again manages to make a preposterous, overloaded plot seem sublime and organic: It's his profound empathy for his characters and their very human dilemmas and flaws that allows him to fling them into all sorts of odd places without ever losing sight of them as people.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

As usual, Almodovar finds unusual camera angles to break up the straightforward storytelling. But for the first time I recall, not a single male character is crucial to his story, and no actor has a leading role. You won't miss them.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

This gritty melodrama is tempered by surreal black humor.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The movie is enjoyable, but not passionately engaging in the way we've come to expect from Almodóvar, and it leaves you somewhat cold in spite of the warmth of Cruz's galvanic performance.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Yet the film, against my wishes, left me unmoved.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Throughout we keep waiting for the real Almodóvar film, and it never arrives.

Film Threat Graham Rae

Speaking as a reviled straight male, I would say that the only true saving grace about this film is Penelope Cruz's performance.