“Volver (meaning `coming back’) is a title that includes several kinds of `coming back’ for me.
I have come back, a bit more, to comedy. I have come back to the world of women, to La Mancha (this is undoubtedly my most strictly Manchegan film, the language, the customs, the patios, the sobriety of the facades, the streets paved with cobblestones).
I am working again with Carmen Maura (after 17 years), with Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas and Chus Lampreave. I have come back to motherhood, as the origin of life and of fiction. And naturally, I have come back to my mother. To come back to La Mancha is always to come back to the maternal bosom.
While writing the screenplay and during the shoot, my mother was always present and very close. I don’t know if the film is good (it’s not for me to say), but I’m sure that it did me a lot of good to make it.
I have the impression, and I hope it’s not a fleeting feeling, that I have managed to slot in a piece of the puzzle (the misalignment of which has caused me a lot of pain and anxiety throughout my life, I would even say that in recent years it had damaged my existence, and taken on far too great a significance).
The piece of the puzzle that
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