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With little more than a knock, “Buenos Dias,” and a
succession of quick kisses, Pedro Almodovar enters your home like a
Spanish telenovela. Whereupon, with his posse of fierce and
impassioned women, he settles in and takes over—for the duration of
his story. This one concerns Raimunda—and the husband who’s murdered
by the daughter of another father, and the restaurant they take over
to make ends meet. Sort of like Mildred Pierce set in
Madrid, sixty years after Mildred was forced to give up piemaking.
And there are moments when you might be forgiven for considering
that Raimunda might be making her own kind of meat pies, à la
Sweeney Todd, given that Almodovar’s plot points include everything
from ghosts and incest, homicide and adultery, so why not
cannibalism as well? Make no mistake: the man loves his women and
their stories, and these women tell them in their own time—as if
we, in the audience, were sitting at their table, sharing their
omelet. This is film as oral folklore, with its own sense of time:
relaxed and unhurried. And with Penelope Cruz and Carmen Maura as
the film’s heart and soul (and channelling the likes of Anna Magnani
and Sophia Loren), all the more reason to relax and listen—and
succumb to these big-hearted spirits.
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