Volver

In the opening shot of Pedro Almodóvar’s new film Volver, the camera glides through a dusty graveyard in La Mancha, weaving a path among the graves. A technicolor army of Spanish mothers, daughters and grandmothers have descended to fuss over the headstones, pruning the flowers, buffing the names and dates to a gold shine, furiously sweeping the stones and sending up puffs of white dust. Suddenly, the humor and color of the scene is blocked out as the camera ducks behind a gravestone. The title of the movie appears in huge and bold red letters across the back of the speckled gray granite. The red on gray color scheme looks tacky. Something about it seems irreverent, and yet it’s passionate in the way that true reverence must be. When I went to see the movie a few days ago, I laughed out loud at this first shot, even though no character had spoken yet. The visual elements of the scene—that juxtaposition of gray death and lipstick-red, the diligent frenzy of the women, the solemn campiness of it all—is classic Almodóvar. And I love it. I’ve seen all of his movies, except for his very first one (if anyone can find me a copy of 1980's Pepi, Luci, Bom, I’ll be your best friend forever). I think a great artist, by one definition, is someone who can dive fully into his own personal and idiosyncratic world, and come up with images and characters and colors that make anyone, from anywhere, want to be a part of his secret and universal world. Almodóvar’s movies are so very Spanish, so very gay. I’m not gay, or Spanish, but his movies make me want to be, if it means getting to live in his world of kinky and morbid beauty. I feel an actual pain when I have to leave the glow of one of his films. I’m jealous of the dumb men who get to blunder around amid the fierce and theatrical and gorgeous women in his movies. Maybe he feels the same way.

Going to see a Spanish movie in the Czech Republic was an odd experience. I remember going to see Amelie in Spain. There I had to rely on the Spanish subtitles. Here I had to rely completely on the Spanish audio. I was very proud of myself—I actually understood most of it. It made me homesick for Spanish. It made me want to say all sorts of crude and beautiful things in my second language. I came out of the theatre wanting desperately to find the nearest Spanish speaker, so I could say things to them like Qué coño quieres? (“What the cunt do you want?”) and Este microondas está bien jodido. (“This microwave is sufficiently fucked.”) I haven’t learned these useful, everyday expressions in Czech yet. And to add insult to homesickness, I was disappointed when, after the film, I asked my friend Martina (who went with me to the movie) why the Czech subtitles always translated the characters’ goodbyes into the standard Czech word for goodbye (and hello), ahoj. “Well, weren’t they just saying goodbye?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said, “but they said it in tons of different ways. They said goodbye with adios (to God), hasta luego (see you later), un beso (a kiss), un besito (a little kiss), and on and on. I don’t think any character said goodbye the same way twice.” “Oh,” she said. “In Czech we just say ‘goodbye’.”
Spanish: 1 point, Czech: 0.