MovieChat Forums > Volver (2007) Discussion > holy sub-plots batman!!! let me get this...

holy sub-plots batman!!! let me get this straight...

posted 15 years ago by ManicMuse
12 replies | jump to latest

*********NOTHING BUT SPOILERS BELOW***************

i found it very hard to follow this movie being that i don't speak spanish. yes, there were subtitles but there was also mucho exposition

so um...

mom was not dead, but a murderer? so, she killed her husband and his mistress (the old hippie) by setting them on fire, then lives on the run until she realizes that she can come back as a "ghost" and care for her crazy @ss sister?

ok, i think i've got that right.

cruz's character's daughter is also her sister? wtf. so, the same cheating dad from above is also a child molester who impregnated his daughter? cruz leaves town with paco, who plays the part of dad. paco attempts to have sex with his now teenaged un-daughter and gets stabbed to death. cruz covers it up.

ok i am still with ya... i think. apparently there are no police investigations in spain.

did everyone assume paco was the real dad? obviously agustina didn't. is she the keeper of their families secrets or something? btw who the heck is she? just a neighbor? and why was her sister even in the plot at all? just another character thrown in to convolute the story? like all that drama about the restaurant?

all this to say, there seemed to be a lot of filler between all this melodrama.
i get that it is about mom and daughter relationships, but all the filler kept distracting me from that.

maybe i would have liked it more with less.

"WHO'S ON TOP & WHO'S ON BOTTOM NOW, huh?! WHO'S ON TOP & WHO'S ON BOTTOM NOW!"

[–] Demarates 15 years ago

You got it all right as far as I can tell.

I also found it quite disappointing that some of the subplots were not followed up on.

Like the movie guy being clearly interested in the lead, but not doing anything about it.

And what about the restaurant ? She agrees to let the fat hooker work there, but then moves away to her home town ? And what about the owner of the place ? You, know, the guy who is now short one huge fridge. (btw did anyone buy two women burrying that thing in a single night ?)

Not to mention the sister who still believes her mom is a ghost, but still has her wash other peoples' hair...

NATIONAL SARCASM SOCIETY

Like we need your support...

[–] girl_on_wire 13 years ago

btw did anyone buy two women burrying that thing in a single night ?)

It's hinted that the hooker worked in a labor field while in Cuba. It's why she tut-tuts Penelope's character and takes over, and why they get through the task so fast.

[–] rigby67 12 years ago

Just saw the movie and it was hard to keep up with everything since I'm not familiar with the geography. I took it that they were all within an hour or two from each other. But now I'm all confuddled. lol

On the other hand, I got that the mother who was presumed dead did not come as a spirit to her own sister. She said she was so out of it that she saw her from the past. I took this to mean she was unaware of the time passage and just thought she was back to the regular routine when the two lived together. Remember the aunt asked Penelope's character if she had the baby?

[–] Ninja_Kitty 14 years ago

Yup, you both understood the movie perfectly. I will add a couple of more things:

Apparently the sister will spend her whole life thinking that her mom is a ghost. How did she buy that lame story in the first place?

The husband "abandons" Penelope and her daugther, such an event would be widely known in such a small village. Penelope asks for help to move the fride into a van and then takes it 180kms away to bury it and nobody gets the hint that the dissapearance of the husband and Penelope's rush to get rid of that fridge are linked?

The daugther doesn't seem too psychologically affected about killing the man who she thougth was her father for the rest of the movie

And people asked me why I hated this movie, which in my opinion is vastly overated. Sometimes I think that critics and people alike praised this movie just because Almodovar directed it....

Life is precious, and it’s our own - not any god’s.

[–] barryriley-1 13 years ago

"...such an event would be widely known in such a small village."

Madrid isn't a small village - it's the capital city of Spain.

[–] superHPfan 13 years ago

Well I think the restaurant part was included so people wondered if someone was going to find the body, at least that's what I thought.

[–] AJMST3K 12 years ago

The husband "abandons" Penelope and her daugther, such an event would be widely known in such a small village.

It is noted in the first scene of the movie that women usually live longer than the men. Perhaps the "disappearance" is a common event?

[–] ready-for-the-good-times 12 years ago

But Raimunda & Paco lived in Madrid. So they didn't live in a small village. They go to La Mancha to visit their aunt and then Sol goes alone for the funeral.

[–] centralpzy 13 years ago

All these so called plot holes have explanations. Watch the movie again.

[–] georgegates 12 years ago

You are missing the part where Cruz wanted to protect her daughter from police investigations which would certainly have revealed the daughter to be actually her sister.
After all kinship or lack thereof was part of the murder motive/self-defense. The police is bound to do DNA tests.

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[–] ph75006 9 years ago

Yes, finally, someone who understood why Raimunda covered up the murder instead of alerting the police. While the murder was totally justified (self-defense for attempted rape), an investigation would no doubt complicate matters and risk exposing the girl as the product of incest/rape. In a small village like theirs where everyone knows each other's business, the scandal of incest would be too much to bear (even though they have moved to Madrid and no longer have any living relatives after Aunt Paula had died). It would taint their family name and they would never be able to go back there again.

[–] velcronewsletter 11 years ago

it's common enough for a husband to walk out, i would have thought people would have assumed he would have done that rather than think anything bad had happened to him