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I have been waiting for this release for months. I know the actors. I know the plot. I know the decisions that Almodóvar made about the music. I have read everything I can about this film. It is a movie about three generations of women from a small Spanish village in La Mancha and the relationships between these women – relationships shaped by murder, superstition, incest, and La Mancha itself. Most of the time when you are this familiar with a film before entering the theater, you know what to expect – what the relationships between the characters are, what the plot is, what is going to happen. But, what separates Almodóvar from other filmmakers is that every scene in this film brings the unexpected, nothing happens as I might have expected, and even though I knew about the murders and that one of the main character is a ghost, way he introduced these plot elements, along with many others, was still a surprise.

Where do you start when discussing the work of a genius? Story? Cinematography? The performances of the actors? Starting with the story, he had a great idea. Two sisters, living in Madrid visit the small village they grew up in to clean the graves of their parents and to visit an aging aunt and childhood friends. One sister, Sole (Lola Duenas) is separated, the other, Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) lives with her unemployed husband and daughter. The working-class sisters are trying to make ends meet in Madrid, while maintaining ties to the village. On one trip, the ghost, Irene (Carmen Maura), who died with her husband in a wildfire years before, stows away in the trunk of Sole’s car to escape the village. Sound improbable? Or silly? Well, this is an Almodóvar comedy, and silliness is one of his staples. And it isn’t a spoiler to point out that Irene never died, it was another woman who died with her husband. In the hands of any other director or writer, the ghost-come-to-life story would be a weak plot device. But Almodóvar is a genius, turning the death and return of Irene into both comedy and tragedy, into the event that ties the lives of all the characters together, and is in no way improbable or impossible.

But, the real story is about the relationships between six women. Irene, and her relationship with her daughters – the dynamics and differences between a mother and her oldest and youngest daughters which is the first time I can recall that I have seen the differences in how parents relate to siblings differently played true instead of made into a stereotype. The relationships that Paula (an astounding Yohona Cobo), the petulant teenage daughter, has with her mother, grandmother, and aunt. The elderly aunt who ties the adult women together, and the aunt’s neighbour, who has her own complicated relationship with her sister and is trying to find her missing mother. Almodóvar loves women, he loves mothers, and he understands the dynamic complexity of related women, how we love and keep secrets, the lengths we will go to protect our children and parents, and how we react to jealousy and fear.

The cinematography? Almodóvar is a master of conveying the personalities of his characters without words. Early in the film one shot focuses on the back ends of Sole and Raimunda, showing that based on the size of their asses one woman is a mother and the other isn’t, silently establishing the relationship between the women and their place in the world. (side note, Penelope Cruz wore a prosthetic to enlarge her backside so she could look more like someone who had born children). In another scene, with one tear, he allows Raimunda to communicate the hardships and burdens of adult women. He uses reflective glass in a Madrid street scene to show the chaos of Raimunda’s life, one of the best uses of reflection in shot I have seen in years. There is a stunning commentary through connecting shots of the disarray caused by the winds in La Mancha, the winds that shape the personalities and emotional states of the women who live there. One of the beauties of any Almodóvar film is his ability to film the darkest apartment, the dirtiest parking lot, a street or a country road and turn it into something beautiful, and this film is no different, even turning street graffiti into art to brighten Madrid’s city streets.

What makes this movie amazing is the actresses. While the American advertising campaign focuses on Penelope Cruz, all six women won the Best Actress award at Cannes, this year, and it was well deserved. Penelope Cruz is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and here she plays a working-class mother, and unlike most actresses who play ordinary women, you really do believe that she is her character – not an actress trying to play a real person. Lola Duena, as usual, steals every scene she is in with her innocent radiance, an innocence that Almodóvar brings out better than any other director she works with. The return of Carmen Maura to the Almodóvar ensemble is long overdue, and her Irene is an unglamourous character, yet she is one of the best actresses working in cinema today and personifies Almodóvar’s perfect mother figure – strong, smart, loving, and flawed. Blanca Portillo, an actress I am not familiar with, is a wry comedian and one of those rare actors who can move you with a change of her glance, or a brief frown. Chus Lampreave makes a brief appearance as Tia Paula, and as usual steals the scene she appears in – no easy task as she was working with Cruz, Duena, and Coho. And Yohana Cobo, another actress I am unfamiliar with, is a force to be reckoned with. Most of the time when teenagers are portrayed on screen, the mannerisms are overacted. Not here. Cobo is a mistress of the sideways glance and the dirty look, and at no time did she ever look like an adult portraying a teenager. This is one of the most stunning casts I have ever seen in one film, and just to watching these great actresses interact is worth the ticket price.

Casting is Almodóvar’s strong point, and why he is such a powerful filmmaker. He works with the most talended and beautiful actors in Spain and throughout Europe and develops relationships with them. He is also known for falling in love with his actors, and this shows in the nuanced performances that he always coaxes from them, and from the incredible performances his casts always deliver for his camera. This movie is no exception, and in my opinion is his best cast film.

As a major Almodóvar fan, I should have written a more glowing review of this film. But, this is not one of his best movies. It is entertaining, but it is not of the caliber of Talk to Her or All About My Mother. The story is beautiful, but not engaging. The characters are intoxicating, and I have already mentioned how wonderful it was to watch all of them, and there was never a boring moment or conversation in the film, yet it was the actresses who I was in love with - not necessarily their characters. The music was not as powerful as the music in his other films, yet not bad or distracting. It almost feels as if he fell out of love with the film at some point, as if he knew all the elements needed for a great movie were in place and all that was required of him was to shoot and edit, and the movie suffers for this disconnect. However, a mediocre Almodóvar film is still better than what most directors can produce when they are at their best, and this is a movie that I highly recommend.

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