The Day I Fell In Love with Penelope

Shlomi Rabi NBC5 Street Team

It’s been one of those weeks. You look around yourself: you have an inch-thick stack of bills to go through, work is slowly turning you into a xenophobe, your pantry is empty, your cats won’t stop nagging about wanting to go to Eurodisney, and you have still not won the lottery. Still. Yep, it’s a Tuesday. By this point there is only one thing for you to do: put on your magic boots, get out your cape, and hop on your magic carpet. Or, if your luck is as bad as mine and your carpet is still at the cleaners, go to the movies. And make sure that when you do, you go see Pedro Almodovar’s latest- Volver.

Describing what Volver is about is mutually exclusive with why the film is so good. It would be like trying to explain why brownie is the best dessert invention since, well, the sliced brownie. Anyway, in Volver Almodovar returns to what he’s best at: women. In his last two flicks he’s tried to protagonize men, but to mediocre results. Almodovar likes–no, make that loves–his women. He overlayers them with quirks, neuroses, and the most idiosyncratic of ticks. He imbues them with the sort of strength and the kind of explosive sexuality that make you forget that most times the plot is ridiculous. His attention to details (and, oh, the color red) continuously keep the plot vivid, throbbing, and the viewers engaged. It’s not short, but best things come to those who wait.

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