The story here is a kind of fairy tale, set entirely in working-class burghs, and it gets less dark as it goes on. The clouds are perpetually parting. Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), a wife and mother, spends her days cleaning at the airport only to come home to her small Madrid apartment and clean some more.
An ugly turn of events right out of "Mildred Pierce" involving her tough teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo ) turns fortuitous for her, and she winds up a proprietress of a little restaurant whose principal clientele is a 30-person film crew. Things get even more interesting when Raimunda's sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas ), discovers that their mother, Irene (Carmen Maura ), who died years ago with their father in a fire, is suddenly very much alive. Shocked and touched, Sole hires Irene to be the shampoo girl at the illegal hair salon she runs out of her house. (Dueñas does wonders with flighty agitation.)
Sole keeps the news from Raimunda, telling her sister over the phone that she's hired a Russian to help out. Even if "Volver" were unbearable, the scenes of Maura clowning it up as a burly Russian hausfrau would have saved it. This radiant and deeply wise movie doesn't need saving, though.
"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 only requirement is a human heart. Sticklers will complain about the film's lack of narrative tidiness, but "Volver" is actually about a kind of undoing, the abolition of anguish. Its emotional structure works backward from melancholy to mirth. By going in the reverse, he's unburdening the melodrama of its fraught build ups. (What was that I said earlier about a lack of ambition?)
