Dan's Papers - December 21, 2007 - Guy Jean de Fraumeni's Hollywood In The Hamptons

Alright boys, adjust your athletic, arch and fan club supporters for this year's Oscar race because the "girls" are running rings around you in spectacular performance. Though it's early for Award night, the world-class, leading ladies have legs - for long-term distance, that is. Sprinting right now are Cate Blanchette in I'm Not There, Keira Knightley in Atonement and even Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding. A director who has utilized the powerful attributes of women and gone for the Gold is Pedro Almodovar. Over an intensely creative succession of evolution, he's developed stars like Penelope Cruz. We're rerunning my review of Volver (Return) to illustrate:

Sr. Almodovar is known by many as the owner/creator of a world where central deity of exalted, powerful women dwell supremely through classic melodramatic travail, steeped in a heavenly saturation of humanity. When Almodovar works in this female genre, his cast does not accommodate men very much but the women, ah! the director/writer gives them such a richly diverse dominion to breathe, live and express themselves in that they bloom fabulously in spite of ghosts, incest, rape and murder. This happens because he supports it all with lively laughter. Almodovar's fertile land gives his women volatile capabilities. This film's troupe of six actresses all shared the acting award at Cannes. I can hear you Mr. Machos sniggering in your thick neck. Go ahead but, see Volver and laugh your head off at that stubby neck and just wait and see if the wispy and jarring, steep and deep adventures of the women don't haunt your midnight-til-four a.m. sleepless hours more vividly than that Playboy centerfold.

The women's community in Volver is not completely unrelated to Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), and All About My Mother (1999). In Volver the women represent those who assisted his growing up. You can feel their existence just as Ms. Cruz's Raimunda does walking with her mother's ghost. She and her sister have come to La Mancha, Almodovar's birthplace, where their parents are buried. Ms. Cruz's ghostly mother is portrayed by the unique Carmen Maura, from the director's earlier years. She is able to give all the horrors and tragic doings a warmth of sly fun as well as eerie bizarreness. Cruz's sister, Sole, is Lola Duenas. The old aunt, Tia Paula, is Chus Lampreave and a troubled neighbor, Augustina, is a wonderful, sorrow-laden Blanca Portillo. Again, we can repeat the sorrows and woes depicted in this straight line narrative - cancer, parental treachery, deathly horror and, so on. But it all adds up to a colorful, upbeat, spiritually consoling result.

And there is the voluptuous Oscar buzzing performances by Penelope Cruz and Yohanna Cobo as her young daughter - a perfect foil. What Cruz's Raimunda has to deal with may seem beyond belief, but how well do you know those folks in Spain or your friends' friends in Montauk for that matter? Perhaps Spain might be a bit more exotic. To start, when someone notices blood on Raimundo's neck, she casually suggests, "It's only 'women's troubles.'" Actually, it's only her husband's blood. The rotten guy had a kitchen knife in his stomach. She promptly stuffs his body into the freezer of the restaurant she works at. So, what's so odd? Did her daughter? Enough said. Raimunda's problems are enormous but she has too many other people's tribulations to care about. Misery is not her thing. She is too busy living her life and the life of others in the spirit of sisterhood, a bygone given that bonded women in friendship. Even her deceased mother hides under the bed until needed and then she's there, much to the dismay of Raimunda's sister who quickly recovers and gets Mama to help run an illegal hair salon in the living room. This shows how far Almodovar's women have come since they teetered on the verge of a breakdown.

Compare Volver, if you like, to Hispanic histrionic novellas or the Hollywood hankie soakers. However, the film is in a totally different camp. No Girl Scouts here. What is incredulous is made a thing of wise, human emotion that shimmers into a totally new reality. Once you sense it, you know you've crossed the threshold of the director's universe.

Guy Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of awardwinning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.