Penelope Cruz is a Best Actress Oscar nominee for “Volver.” How many other actors and actresses have been nominated for Oscars while acting in non-English speaking roles? To See The Complete List! You’ll be surprised how many there have been. Three generations of women survive easterly wind, fire, madness, superstition and even death through goodness, lies and an unlimited vitality.
They are: Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), married to an unemployed worker, and her teenager daughter (Yohana Cobo). Sole (Lola Dueñas), her sister, who earns her living as hairdresser. And their mother (Carmen Maura), dead in a burning, with her husband. This character comes as an apparition first to her sister (Chus Lampreave) and then to Sole, even though the ones she had unsettled affairs with were Raimunda and her village neighbour, Agustina (Blanca Portillo). ‘Volver’ is not a surreal comedy, though it might seem so at times. The living and the dead live together without problems, but provoking hilarious situations and others full of deep and genuine emotion. It is a movie about the culture of death in my native region, La Mancha. My folks there live it in astonishing simplicity. The way in which the dead are still present in their lifes, the richness and humanity of their rites makes it possible for the dead to never really die.
“Volver” shatters all clichés of a dark Spain and shows a Spain that is as real as it is opposed. A white Spain, spontaneous, fun, fearless, fair and with solidarity.
