Cannes. Volver.

"The Festival de Cannes loves Pedro Almodóvar and audiences seem to love his new film," writes Eugene Hernandez for indieWIRE, where the director kept a production diary last year. Eugene's got a good, tight summary of Volver and some fresh quotes from the man himself, but the gist comes up high: "If attendees were waiting for a favorite film to emerge early in the festival, many may just have found one."

Ray Bennett in the Hollywood Reporter: "It's very difficult to mesh fantasy with reality but with great charm and a light touch, Almodóvar shows exactly how it should be done." Back in March, Variety's Jonathan Holland wrote that it may be "Almodóvar'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."

Earlier: Emmanuel Burdeau in Cahiers du cinéma and Paul Julian Smith in Sight & Sound.

Update: Geoff Andrew for Time Out: "By the time it's ended, it becomes clear that during that first hour, Pedro was in fact very carefully putting all the elements into place for a majestic tribute to women's cunning, courage and capacity for love that is as cathartic as anything he's done. And, of course, just as enjoyable."

Updates, 5/20: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "[A]n elegant and mature tragicomedy by an artist at the top of his form, fully ripe but not too sweet. If, as Almodóvar told us at the press conference, he wrote Penélope Cruz's working-class mom role in tribute to the kinds of women Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale used to play in Italian films, it never feels remotely like shtick."

Cruz has set up her own production company; Pamela Rolfe has details and quotes in the Hollywood Reporter.

For Télérama (and in French), Frédéric Strauss's long talk with Almodóvar and Carmen Maura.

Anne Thompson: "This is Almodóvar at his most Sirkian: Volver is high melodrama: there's murder and incest and a frozen body and cooking and many many women..."

Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE: "Volver is the Spanish maverick's most finely crafted and emotionally satisfying feature since All About My Mother, which garnered Almodóvar a Best Directing prize at Cannes in 1999."

Updates, 5/21: Time's Richard Corliss: "The second time, not expecting a masterpiece, I found a film that pleased, impressed and touched me — a fully satisfying comedy-melodrama about the burden of motherhood, the power of sisterhood.... Is Volver a masterpiece? Probably not. But it is the work of a master still at the peak, the high plateau, of his form."

The Observer's Jason Solomons: "Volver is so much classier and more distinctive than any other film showing in these first few days of the festival that it should return for prizes at the closing ceremony a week tonight."

George the Cyclist: "It may have frequently begged credibility and been more fluff than substance, but it was well-executed and will please those who just want to be distracted and entertained."

Updates, 5/23: Karl Rozemeyer talks with Cruz and Almodóvar for Premiere.

As suggested by his earlier comments here, Ronald Bergan is a dissenter on this one and writes in the Guardian's Culture Vulture, "On the evidence of Volver, the 57-year-old Almodóvar, who is rich and fat, is in danger of becoming soft."

The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu: "Almodóvar has created a slightly quieter drama than is usual for him - no transvestites! But the music, visual designs and direction are all marvellous. Cruz, relishing her return to home territory, is as fantastic and sparky as ever."

Boyd van Hoeij at europeanfilms.net: "In many ways, the film represents a more mainstream and accessible – if still unusually dense – effort from the La Mancha director, as he forges a tale of family secrets and history, foregoing the morally ambiguous morass of Hable con ella and the autobiographical reflections on his life and art of La mala educación for some good old-fashioned storytelling."

Matt Riviera: "What impresses me most with Almodóvar is the peerless writing, which manages to be clever and infused with a generous humanity all at the same time. Like Bad Education or All About My Mother before it, Volver is a densely-plotted film full of twists and turns, mixing elements of thriller, melodrama and comedy, yet managing to land rather elegantly on its feet by the time the credits roll."

Cinematical's James Rocchi: "If Volver does take the Palme d'Or, it'll be because Almodóvar's work and past give it a little push; at the same time, though, the film's charm, warmth and whimsy are powerful enough that if it does win, it'll be petty larceny and not grand theft."

Update, 5/26: "[C]olorful, exuberant and uplifting," writes Sheila Johnston in the Independent. "It's that near-unique phenomenon, in fact: a totally idiosyncratic auteur film that critics revere and audiences adore."

Updates, 5/28: "It's a pleasure, if hardly a revelation," writes Jonathan Romney in the Independent. "Cruz is dazzling, more than making up for all those dodgy English-language performances. Witty, sparky, torridly sexy, she's a European star in the grand old-school mode of Sophia Loren."

Gary Meyer, blogging for the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "While not a great film, Volver is wonderfully entertaining, full of surprises, and features a performance by Cruz that made me an instant fan."

Posted by dwhudson at May 19, 2006 7:39 AM