Soft focus ... Pedro Almodóvar on the set of Volver
People have been falling over each other to praise Pedro Almodóvar's Volver which, according to Peter Bradshaw in these pages, "has captured the hearts of everyone at Cannes". I can vouch for at least one person whose heart remained at liberty, writes Ronald Bergan.
At the Cannes press conference, Almodóvar was asked if he would ever make a film in Hollywood. He replied that he would probably not consider it because he would lack the freedom to do exactly what he liked. Well, I have news for Pedro. He has already made it.
Volver - a soapy confection about the "haunting" of a troubled family - only needs a change of location to the midwest of America, and a couple of other stars alongside Penelope Cruz, and you have a typical mainstream feel-good Hollywood product.
Because the film has a cast made up entirely of women of different generations who keep kissing each other on the cheeks, critics have called it warm and wonderful. This sentimental, black comedy has none of the verve, edge, camp humour or outrageousness of his earlier films. It is also completely sexless -despite the presence of Penelope Cruz, who spends most of the film fighting back glycerine tears in preparation for her Oscar acceptance speech.
The attraction of Almodóvar's iconoclastic films lies in his ability to incorporate elements of underground and gay culture into mainstream forms with wide crossover appeal. The films often make the link between violence and eroticism and expertly tread the thin line between melodrama and comedy. Volvo walks this line heavily. Although the plot is as trashy as many of Almodóvar's other films - deconstructed television soap operas and Hollywood weepies - it has been done better by the director exactly 16 times previously.
On the evidence of Volver, the 57-year-old Almodóvar, who is rich and fat, is in danger of becoming soft.
There is an unfunny moment in Volver when a "ghost" farts which could stand as an emblem for the film as a whole. Volver is a ghost of Almodóvar and it stinks.
