eternal return; From female courage to flowery melodrama, Volver showcases all of Pedro Almodovar's favorite obsessions.(Movie review)

It has become easy to take Pedro Almodovar for granted. When the great Spanish director's Volver played at Cannes last May, the public adored it, but jaded media types grumbled that it was too tame, too enjoyable, too commercial-like the real problem with today's world is that our theaters are being swamped by funny, compassionate, beautifully made movies. Almodovar's latest is all that and more, a deliciously entertaining yarn about the bonds between women.

Penelope Cruz stars as Raimunda, a fiery working-class wife with a disaffected teenage daughter, Paula (Yohana

Cobo); a layabout husband, Paco (Antonio de la Torre); and a neurotic sister, Sole (Lola Duenas), who works as a hairdresser. Raimunda's simple, hard existence might sound like the stuff of grim kitchen-sink realism, but this is an Almodovar picture-which means, of course, that she's effortlessly glamorous and that her life is breezy melodrama. Before we know it, Raimunda is covering up Paco's murder, illegally opening a restaurant, and facing the incurable cancer of her friend Agustina (Blanca Portillo). As if that weren't enough, her dead mother, Irene (played by Almodo_var icon Carmen Maura), decides to return from the grave, a droll, melancholy, wild-haired ghost eager to straighten out the lives of the living.

In Spanish, volver means "to come back," and Volver is positively bursting with returns. The repressed past returns in the revelation of an old crime. Raimunda returns from Madrid to the small La Mancha village of her childhood. And in telling her story, Almodovar returns to the provincial La Mancha of his own youth, a conservative region whose stiff winds are notorious for causing fires, insanity, and supernatural visitations. Although revisiting his birthplace prompts him to mute his trademark Pop Art palette-the movie's largely shot in earth tones, aside from the odd, sanguinary burst of red-it hasn't dulled

his desire to create a kaleidoscope of moods. Volver casually weaves together Mildred Pierce melodrama, trash-TV high jinks, even a haunting version of the classic tango song "Volver." Almodovar is a master of shifting tones, turning from suspense to a great joke

in the blink of an eye. After dispatching Paco's corpse, Raimunda runs into her neighbor, who spots some blood on her neck. When he asks about it, she replies simply,

"Women's troubles." Naturally, the guy believes her.