The first time I watched Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar s latest film Volver was on a cold, dreary December night that can only be described as utterly dejected. Based on the ecstatic critical reaction that met the film both at last year s Cannes Film Festival and then later on in the United States, I was almost certain the film wouldn t disappoint. I wasn t sure what to expect though since I highly admired Almodóvar s past films but didn t necessarily connect emotionally with all of them. I didn t identify with almost all of the Volver characters; after all, the movie is essentially a story about a group of women being pretty much the way they are. Nevertheless, and for the two-hour duration of the film, I was totally lost and hypnotized; I fell in love with Penélope Cruz and I deeply yearned to reside longer in Almodóvar s unique, poignant and utterly buoyant universe. Volver, premiering tonight at the Euro-Arab Film Caravan at the Cairo Opera House s Creativity Center, opens with an extended shot of a bunch of women cleaning up the graves of their husbands, mothers and their own children in the Spanish village of La Mancha where men usually die young. Raimunda (Cruz) and her younger, melancholic loner sister Sole (Lola Dueñas) had lost their parents three years ago in a fire accident. The only surviving member of their family is the aging Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave) who claims that the ghost of their mother is tending to her. Raimunda has a 14-year-old daughter Paula with her drunken, bum husband Paco. When Aunt Paula dies, Raimunda s dead mother (Carmen Maura) returns to sort out unfinished business with her daughter and ask for forgiveness while unveiling a web of mysteries. Volver, which means to return in English, marks a far cry from Almodóvar s earlier madcap post-punk comedic dramas of the 80s and early 90s and sees him reaching full maturity after All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Bad Education. Unlike any of his past works that tread the line between the original and the outrageous, Volver delves deeper into the territory of the 50s American melodramas, leaving the earlier Andy Warhol and John Waters' influences behind. The film is Almodóvar s most accessible (and commercially successful) film to date for choosing to tell a straight story that alludes to the Douglas Sirk weepies, yet still managing to look distinctively fresh. Volver is set in a town where all men seem to have disappeared. Not only do they not exist except in these ladies' memories, but their presence is deemed to be irrelevant and, in many ways, inconsequential to their lives. Almodóvar, who was brought up in a similar matriarchal community in La Mancha, referred to Volver as his return to his mother s bosom; a salute to all the women who embraced him during his turbulent childhood. Indeed, Volver is a film about women, all kinds of women: mothers, lovers, sisters, businesswomen, prostitutes. It s a film about their bond, their love and support for one another, their memories that vividly coexist with their future and the juxtaposed joy with the pain of being the way they are. All plotlines of the story that involves several murders and two rape incidents, are weaved in a manner that acts as an illustration of their connection and interrelated relationship with one another. The most astonishing aspect of the film though is how the aforementioned unsettling incidents feel natural and unthreatening in a world where brightness and glee are rendered as basic structural elements as much as the dark ones. Both elements can t subsist without the other and perhaps no one can truly enjoy the real taste of happiness before learning to accept grief and sadness. Although Almodóvar s La Mancha is set in a modern day Spain, the former bad boy of Spanish cinema depicts it as an idealistic place from the past where technology has failed to rob its spirit and general lifestyle. As with all Almodóvar s films, Volver brims with eye-dazzling palette of divinely harmonizing colors in nearly every frame of the film. Even in the most distressing moments of the movie, cinematographer José Luis Alcaine s bright colors never wash away. The lives of these women, according to Almodóvar, are simply too strong and powerful to be defeated by any kind of setback. It s Penélope Cruz s performance though that Volver might be eternally remembered for. Cruz s last memorable performance came in 1999 as the pregnant young nun in All About My Mother, another Almodóvar vehicle. Since then, the Spanish native has been typecast by Hollywood as plainly being pretty in a slew of unremarkable American flicks. That s why one feels as if he s watching Cruz acting for the first time in such a long period. Her gut-wrenching performance as the young mother Raimunda is a tour de force; a rollercoaster of various impulses and emotions floating seamlessly with no boundaries. Raimunda is the embodiment of the Mediterranean mother with all her characteristic strength, vulnerability, resourcefulness, passion and voluptuousness. Raimunda has been carrying a heavy burden for years, declining to share it with anyone else but herself. She s too headstrong to reveal her accumulated pain to even her closest friends. She s simply a fearless woman modeled on the great Italian siren Anna Magnani (Roma Open City) and Joan Crawford s Mildred Pierce, who s unafraid to experience sorrow or exuberance equally to the extreme. Volver may not be as riveting as Almodóvar s masterpiece Talk to Her but it s more engaging and inviting. I felt a strange longing to revisit the filmmaker s La Mancha once again, to get acquainted further with the characters, to remember what it s like to live in a universe populated solely by these eccentric, puzzling and fabulous creatures. It s often said that mature film experience of great filmmakers like Bergman, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa or Kubrick ceases to establish a line of empathy between the audience and their protagonists, choosing instead to suck you into their world and creating a cocoon that causes reality to fade out for the brief duration of the film. With Volver, one recalls how majestic movies can be; how a dark room with a big screen can be the only shelter a society can offer; and how the film world can be superior to the elation found in the real world. Volver is screening today 7 pm at the Creativity Center of the Cairo Opera House. 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