Volver

Even if Volver sounds too high-concept for you, know that Almodovar 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 Almodovar 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.