PEDRO ALMODÓVAR BEGINS SHOOTING HIS NEXT FILM 'VOLVER'
Its stars Yohana Cobo, Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas and Blanca Portillo shared the press conference with the director.

The filmmaker from La Mancha looks back to his homeland in his 17th film, which he describes as a “domestic Indiana Jones. I’m back on my roots and my mother’s story, always based on my life, my memories and my family”. .

Carmen Maura, the first Almodóvar girl, works with him for the first time in several years, as the mother of Penélope Cruz and Lola Dueñas. In Almodovar’s own words, “Maura’s character is a modern woman and a good mother, but she is desperately in love with a man who is far from being a saint. After her death, she returns to town for working out things she could not settle while being alive”.

Penélope Cruz represents a “mix of Sofía Loren and Claudia Cardinale, a young mother carrying a hard life upon her shoulders. Therefore, she shows an unfriendly personality and a difficult relation with everyone around in town. This role is a big challenge, because she runs across millions of moods in a few seconds”.

Her sister in this story is Lola Dueñas, an illegal hairdresser whose shop is the meeting point for all the neighbourhood gossips. “This is an essential part of the town’s life. Is the place where each woman becomes anyone else’s psychiatrist and therapist, and the place Carmen (Maura) chooses to appear. At first, her ghost scares Lola, because she is a fearful woman. But after a while, she will find on his dead mother the company and support she needs in her lonely life.”

Teenager actress Yohana Cobo makes her debut with Almodóvar in the role of Cruz daughter and Maura’s grandchild: “she holds a cold and distant relationship with Penelope. But something terrible happens to both of them. From them on, the teenager depends on her mother.”

And Blanca Portillo is “one of those neighbours I’ve always met: the main symbol of the town, and an essential piece of its machinery. Is the most narrow minded there, because she did not went out from her backyard in her whole life. This character is my personal tribute for neighbours all around the world.”

With regard to his last film, La mala educación, this is a complete breaking point. Almodovar explains: “Volver is the film I need to do now, even more because I already did La mala educación. It is no coincidence that my films with male characters are always darker and heavier than my luminous women films. I could not make a comedy about men. Talking about men means talking straighter about myself, and I don’t feel I can do that with sense of humour.

Volver is a comedy, at least a dramatic comedy, because there are tears in all my comedies and laughs in all my dramas. There is death all along the story, but this is not a mournful film. I admire mainly the daily nature of death for little towns like mine, the way they humanize its rituals. In Volver, death does not mean terror or “berlanguian” comedy. It will be showed with respect and fidelity towards my childhood memories.”

The shooting of 'Volver' begins on July 18th and will continue for the next 11 weeks around Madrid and Castilla la Mancha.