Picture it: downtown Madrid, 1970, the setting for director Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh. In the film, a hysterical pregnant hooker gives birth on a bus. At once tragic and comic, that unforgettable (and prototypically Almodóvar) scene gives birth to more than just an illegitimate son: The actress who brings that moment to life emerges as an international movie goddess. Hello, Penélope Cruz.
As a teenager, Cruz, a native of Madrid, saw Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Almodóvar's 1990 romp about a hostage situation that turns into love, starring Antonio Banderas as an escaped mental patient and Victoria Abril as the object of his affection. After that, Cruz knew she had to be an actress and that she must work with Almodóvar. By 17, Cruz had starred in two important Spanish films that gained international attention: Jamón, jamón and Belle époque. Unbeknownst to her, Almodóvar had seen her work in these films. The director recalls, "She played the part of a wild teenager (in Jamón, jamón), and she was fabulous in the film. She proved that she was an excellent actress and had a very original, spontaneous way of acting." One day, while blow-drying her hair, Cruz was told that Almodóvar was on the phone for her. "For me that sounded so crazy," she says with an intoxicating smile. "I kept drying my hair. They said it five times, so I thought, 'Maybe it's true. Maybe dreams come true.' I went to the phone, and once he said hello, I knew that was his voice, and our relationship started that day."
Almodóvar told Cruz that he loved her work (which she also thought was a joke) and that the female lead of the film he had just written was 35. Since she was 17, she couldn't play it. She proudly finishes the story: "He said, 'I cannot give [that part] to you, but I just wanted to meet you and let you know that I'm going to write characters that fit you like a glove. Then he called me for Live Flesh and All About My Mother, and now this is the most important movie of my career."
Volver, the film Cruz is referring to, translates as "Returning." It marks an almost harmonious convergence of returns. The director has returned -- both literally and figuratively -- to his native region of La Mancha, to the memory of his late mother and the women of his village. It's the return of Almodóvar's first muse, Carmen Maura, with whom the director has not collaborated in 17 years. And it's Cruz's return from Hollywood to the director who best understands her gifts and who made her a star.
Raimunda, Cruz's character, spends large portions of the film terrified and crying. The potency of such raw emotion so near the surface in Cruz comes as a revelation to American audiences, who consider her an outrageously beautiful ingenue and not an impressively versatile, earthy actress poised to emerge as this generation's Sophia Loren or Anna Magnani. The Loren comparison is inevitable: The power of Cruz's performance immediately brings to mind the mesmerizing effect of Loren's Academy Award–winning performance in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women. Loren's Cesira is a woman driven to desperation to protect her 13-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. The Magnani reference comes from Almodóvar himself, who offers a clip from the Italian neo-realist queen of the film Bellissima by director Luchino Visconti. Both Italian films and Volver revolve around the seemingly endless depths of mother love. That's a theme the director's addressed before, most memorably in All About My Mother (Almodóvar's mother, Francisca Caballero, died in 1999).
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