Volver

It's up to charm to twinkle our attention away from the loose threads and daytime TV plotting.

Even if Volver sounds too high-concept for you, know that Almodóvar is smart enough not to rest on laughs alone, extending his premise to dark, though occasionally tidy psychological territory.

It's clever and entertaining. It's marvelously deft, but never daffy. It works well enough, despite feeling like the most conventional film this great, envelope-pushing Spanish director has ever made.

Pedro Almodóvar whipstitches a movie from patches of those mother-daughter melodramas Mildred Pierce, Bellissima and Two Women and makes it seamless and original, funny as it is fierce, breathtaking as it is life-affirming.

The Return rattles its chains for a spell, but it doesn't linger -- it quickly leaves.

Volver is rich, crazy, ambitious and filled with heaven and earth in a way that no other filmmaker can touch. It is a flawed beauty, but the beauty is so much more important than the flaws.

Almodóvar's phantasms are emotionally anchored so the story never gets away from its characters -- just when you suspect he might have overplayed his hand he stages a clever, surprising inversion to tie the film together.

Almodóvar's maturity navigates not only the thin lines between comedy and drama and between body and spirit, but also between rebellion and acceptance

At the center of this hectic universe, [Cruz] never misses a step and may even elevate what Almodovar originally conceived.

With all its unexpected twists and turns, the story still unfolds naturally, like some gaudy Mediterranean flower.

Pedro Almodovar's Volver is amazingly bright, fresh and clean for a film dealing with murder, adultery, incest, malignant disease and the occasional supernatural apparition.

Hollywood, take notice: If you hand Penelope Cruz a role with more depth than the paper it's printed on, this is what you'll get.