19. Almodóvar and Latin America

The Making of a Transnational Aesthetic in Volver

Summary

Volver (2006) holds a crucial position in the expanding global vision of Almodóvar's cinema. Though obviously a Spanish film in terms of its setting, actors, and subject-matter, the film's presumed “Spanishness” also exemplifies the co-production of a transnational Hispanic identity. The most explicit textual expression of that condition is to be found in the pivotal musical number that gives the film its title. The objective of this essay is two-fold: first to probe the implications of the strategy through which Volver stabilizes a mode of address directed to both Spanish and Latin American audiences, especially in its construction of collective memory; secondly, to interrogate the relation between the increasing emphasis on Latin American cultural tropes and the co-productions with Latin American auteurs in which Almodóvar's production company, El Deseo, engages beginning in 2000.