This year's Cannes Film Festival has six best heroines, which is really a miracle, and all six are from the Spanish director Amodova's Return. It is also the first time in history to see five heroines standing on the podium (except Chas Lamprey), which is really pleasing to the eye.
Audiences who are familiar with Amodova's films know that he always pays attention to the world from the perspective of women, and is good at moral torture with unruly style to inspire people's thinking. Return is a movie that gives people joy, sadness, tears and smiles for a while. It gives me the feeling that there are tears in laughter, but it also gives people a sense of human strength and shortcomings, and tells the love and hate between family members.
As Almodovar's 16 feature film, Return has once again returned to the theme of women's life that she is best at, but different from the past, this comedy theme about the gap between life and death is realistic, but it uses a lot of surreal techniques to show the truth of life through seemingly absurd plots. The story revolves around the young woman Lehman and her sister Sol. The story begins between their dead mother Irene, Menstrual Tia, neighbor argus Tina and Lamanda's daughter Bora. Lamanda is a cleaner at Madrid airport, and her husband Pacao idles all day, so the responsibility of raising her daughter Bora falls on her alone. In order to live a better life, remand tower and her sister, barber Sol, left their hometown and came to the capital. Since then, they have been busy all day. Mancha's hometown is a typical Spanish village, where men usually die young, while women live long and are full of maternal paradise. A few years ago, the sisters' mother Irene and her husband died in a fire. Irene's sister Tia still lives in Mancha, and her warm neighbor argus Tina visits her from time to time. One night, Ramonda suddenly found her daughter in a trance. It turned out that she stabbed her father to death while resisting his rape. Ramonda calmly cleaned up the scene and decided to accept the charge of manslaughter. Tia died of illness, and argus Tina confided a secret to Sol who went home to attend the funeral: the villagers saw Irene's ghost coming back and took care of her sister Tia in the last days. The next afternoon, when Saul returned to his menstrual home, he really met his dead mother Irene on the stairs. It turned out that Irene, who was isolated from the world, was still worried about her daughter and granddaughter. She came back to finish what she didn't finish when she was alive, giving her daughter and granddaughter the greatest comfort.
It is no exaggeration to describe the return of three generations of women and the tragedy of the family with doomed love. The women in the film are independent and self-reliant, while the men in the film are the devil wears Prada. Whether Repatta's daughter killed and raped her father or the cruelty of Repatta's father was later described by her mother, it was shocking! Amodova is urging ethics, which is actually the epitome of a serious female spiritual world. Three generations of mother and daughter, as well as women all over the world in the same era, have established a spiritual circle of unity and mutual assistance between them. In fact, in that turbulent Madrid, the uneasiness brought by the background of the times has divided countless families. Hurricanes, floods and fires devour everyone's life and spirit crazily. Only by relying on each other's company, women can make each other warm, support and survive with their beautiful imagination and constant warmth. The living and the dead live in peace, inspiring the deepest and sincere feelings. In fact, at the beginning of the story, the camera is aimed at a group of women who are trying their best to paint tombstones for their loved ones, which indicates the silent communication between the living and the dead.
According to Amodova, this is a film about the death culture in his hometown of La Mancha. People there live a surprisingly simple life, and the dead are still living in their lives, and there is no real death. Unity shattered the black impression of Spain and showed a completely different Spain that was pure, natural, interesting, fearless and United. Even though the film uses a lot of colorful image elements, Almodova always wants to tell the simplest story, and the name of the story is life. For him, the happiest memory of childhood is the river in his hometown. His mother washes clothes by the river and he catches fish. The beautiful songs of housewives make the river like a happy party, and the endless river quietly sends away happy childhood and ignorant adolescence. Almodovar admits that Return is one of his most personal works, and his hometown Mancha in memory is full of maternal warmth and traces of time. "The movie is like a dream window, and I believe that the world I see from it is more interesting than the world I live in."
From My Mysterious Flower to Bad Education, the beautiful and sad soundtrack in the film comes from Alberto, the chief master of Spanish film soundtrack. Gracias's hand, if Almodova can always create a gorgeous sensational feeling with simple and flawless lenses, then Gracias's perfect score is indispensable, and his music always fits the secrets and scars in Almodova's works delicately. The return is the sixth close cooperation between them.
Unification is a wonderful movie, even suitable for people who didn't like Amodova before. This film is different from any film he has made before. This is a warm movie.