LOCATION: Madrid
FILM: Volver

This quote of a simple exchange between two of the leads pretty much sums up the movie….

Raimunda: “Are there things I should know and don’t?“
Sole: “Oodles”.

 

The film opens in a cemetery full of women cleaning and tending to their families’ gravestones. Two sisters, Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas) and Raimunda’s daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) are cleaning the grave of their parents who had died in a tragic fire. The events which had occurred on the night of the fire are only gradually revealed, but are central to the plot of the film.

 

After their Aunt Paula dies, Sole returns to the village for the funeral. Agustina (Blanca Portillo), Aunt Paula’s neighbor whose mother had disappeared without a trace three years ago, tells Sole that she has heard the aunt talking with Sole’s departed mother. In her aunt’s house, Sole encounters the ghost of her mother, who had “died in the arms of her husband” in the fire. Arriving home, she hears a knocking sound from the rear of her car, and opens the car and again encounters her mother’s ghost. She has brought luggage and intends to stay with Sole for a while.

 

The entire movie was filmed in Madrid and La Mancha and een though there aren’t really any specific locations of great interest I think that watching Volver before taking a trip to either of those parts of Spain would be a great addition to your trip – it’s also a crackin movie and Penelope Cruz is stunning! (Tom Cruise what were you thinking?)

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