VOLVER
Penelope Cruz’s lackluster performances in Hollywood movies like Gothika and Vanilla Sky left North American audiences questioning her star power. Well, question no more. Her powerhouse performance in Volver as Raimunda, a resourceful working class mother who must deal with a precocious daughter, a lazy husband and an eccentric sister, is earning her the best notices of her career. Working in her native Spanish and paired for a second time with superstar director Pedro Almodóvar, Cruz unveils a tangled web of a story that mixes humor with murder, abuse and hope—think Mildred Pierce with a hint of Arsenic and Old Lace— as three generations of women deal with the hands that life has dealt them.
