Trude Diesen
posted 2 August 2006

Pedro Almodóvar's new movie begins with two sisters, Raimunda and Sole, returning from Madrid along with Raimunda's daughter Paula to visit their mother's sister, Tia Paula, in their little birth town on La Mancha, where their parents died in a fire some years ago. In the opening scene the women polish their parents' grave, and the eastern wind blows, the wind which causes many summer fires, one of which killed their parents, and which is responsible for the high incidence of insanity in the village.

Tia Paula dies shortly after their visit, and although Raimunda is the one closest to her, she can't attend the funeral because she has just found her husband Paco dead on her kitchen floor, killed by their daughter after he made sexual advances. Sole reluctantly goes to the funeral, and brings the village mentality back with her to Madrid - along with her dead mother.

Raimunda is the centre of the movie; in her character the world of the multiethnic working class neighbourhoods of Madrid meets the culture of a town on La Mancha. Through her the cultures and memories of La Mancha and her childhood are joined together and express themselves. What first appears to be her mother's ghost is back to ask her for forgiveness, and Raimunda is reminded of a terrible secret from her childhood which makes it possible for her to understand her daughter's actions.

The many entangled stories within the film are what make it so rich. Augustina, Tia Paula's neighbour, is an important figure, and together with Sole she provides a storyline at first separate from the main story: throughout the film we gradually learn how her own mother's disappearance is related to the death of the sisters' parents. Sole, played by Lola Dueñas, runs her own unlicensed hair salon, and she takes her mother on as an assistant, provoking several comical situations. Dueñas' acting and interacting with Carmen Maura (the mother) and Blanca Portillo as Augustina produce some of the best and funniest scenes in the film.

The film's surrealism is contrasted with realism in the way the working class Madrid neighbourhood is described. There we meet immigrants, prostitutes and the hardships of life in a big city. The comedy of death is not something we usually see in films today. Maybe this is because our fearful approach to reality doesn't allow us to see death as a perfectly normal part of life, or maybe we just don't like to see death dealt with in other ways than through tragic and horrible circumstances.

Pedro Almodóvar presents us with a beautifully narrated story about how death is dealt with in a town on La Mancha. Almodóvar says he can't deal with death, but this movie presents one way of living with death as they do it where he is from. One way of understanding the comedy and playfulness with which we see death and life presented in his film, however, is as a denial of this more traditional way of coping with death. The people in the village don't need to laugh off their customs; death is part of their life. Almodóvar needs to make it funny, and this may be seen as proof of our incapability of emulating the village's way of dealing with the inevitability of death. On the other hand, it is relieving to watch a film so filled with funny observations about things we normally consider too horrible to laugh at.