Even the most fervent critics of Pedro Almodóvar cannot fail to be impressed by the wit the Spanish maestro brings to Volver. Age has mellowed his two-fingered arrogance towards convention. Time has polished the craft. Volver is a moist and creamy joy about incest and murder; a thriller crammed with strong, anxious women and a homage to his late mother — who, he admits, was actually more interested in the box- office returns than the artistic merits of any of his films. The title (literal translation: “coming back”) plugs into so many Almodóvarian sockets it seems pointless to list them.

Fans will be happy enough to see the director reunited with several of his favourite muses, including Carmen Maura, who haunts the film as a dead matriarch whose marble grave is being polished by her grown-up children in the opening scene.

Maura’s death in a suspicious fire three years earlier has left a smouldering mystery in a small town in La Mancha. Her ghost, the superstitious locals claim, stalks the streets at midnight.

Her daughter, Raimunda, played by Penélope Cruz, can’t stand this mad speculation. She has other fights on her hands: a senile aunt, an overly inquisitive daughter and an empty bank account.

What will never change is Almodóvar’s willingness to gamble with our suspended sense of disbelief. It’s what makes and breaks his films. Cruz is the most preposterously glamorous hospital cleaner ever to set foot on screen, but the director manipulates this irony quite brilliantly.

The Hollywood diva acts her grumpy heart out as a Dickensian widow with few admirers. But the camera begs to differ. The wobbly shots of her shapely buttocks and the overhead close-ups of her cleavage — the most spectacular in world cinema, according to the director (and frankly who’s going to argue?) — are mischievous distractions that wrong-foot every gloomy expectation.

It’s this painful discrepancy between the life that Raimunda thinks she inhabits and the rather more magical one that Almodóvar paints around her that transforms the film into such an enthralling watch. Gossip oils the plot. The village wenches are for ever on the move, clumping about La Mancha in high-heel wedges, clutching and picking at their black peasant frocks and blaming the persistent wind for fires and wild rumours.

Raimunda has to grapple with a long queue of family crises. First in line is Agustina, a childhood friend stricken with cancer (Blanca Portillo). Next is an incestuous husband who has to be knifed and parked in the nearest available freezer. Then a very undead-looking Maura pops out from under the spare bed in her sister’s spare room. And an amorous film producer falls in love with her when she “borrows” an absent friend’s restaurant around the corner to ease her debts.

Almodóvar’s appetite for secrets and buried grief is never easy to reconcile with his taste for gushy sentiment. But Volver is a terrific exception. The comedy is as raw and shallow as a Joe Orton play. The sassy female cast are an unpredictable delight, and the imperious Cruz delivers what can only be described as the performance of her career.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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