Newsweek by David Ansen

The great Spanish director's fourth triumph in a row--following "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her" and "Bad Education"--Volver (which means "coming back") flows effortlessly between peril and poignancy, the real and the surreal, even life and death.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

It is refreshing to see Cruz acting in the culture and language that is her own. As it did with Sophia Loren in the 1950s, Hollywood has tried to force Cruz into a series of show-biz categories, when she is obviously most at home playing a woman like the ones she knew, grew up with, could have become.

Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten

Raimunda believes that dirty linen should be washed at home: Thank goodness Almodóvar hangs some of it up on the screen to dry.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Crammed with outrageous turns of fortune and quicksilver shifts in tone, Almodovar's film is held together by performances so subtle and complex it's hard to single out only one as exceptional. But Cruz is astonishing.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

With this, possibly his most subdued film, Almodo´var reinforces his status as one of the most distinctive and talented filmmakers working today.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Volver is Almodovar's passionate tribute to the community of women -- living and dead -- who nurtured him. Through the transformative power of his art -- carried on the wings of Alberto Iglesias' exhilarating score -- we feel their presence. You do not want to miss this one.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

In Volver, the latest marvel to emerge from his sharp and joyful mind, Almodovar blends autobiography, gossip, melodrama, music, the supernatural and the suffocatingly quotidian in a story about a woman -- indeed, a tribe of women -- struggling through a life of pain and disappointment.

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

Almodóvar is still one of the few directors worth watching just for how he uses color on the screen. But the pleasures have always run much deeper, and now they run deeper still.

Village Voice

Almodóvar isn't what he used to be (who is?), but he's a master of the medium nevertheless, deploying color and light and shadow not merely to express emotions but to tap into ours, directing the blood flow of the audience as much as he directs the movie.

Variety by Jonathan Holland

Peopled with superbly drawn, attractive characters smoothly integrated into a well-turned, low-tricks plotline, Volver may rep Almodovar's most conventional piece to date, but it is also his most reflective, a subdued, sometimes intense and often comic homecoming that celebrates the pueblo and people that shaped his imagination.

The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett

It's very difficult to mesh fantasy with reality, but with great charm and a light touch, Almodovar shows exactly how it should be done.

Salon by Stephanie Zacharek

Part noir-comedy, part ghost story, but it's mostly a potent reflection on how where we come from shapes us, in ways we can't understand until we've been away for a long, long while.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

Before it loses its fizz--maybe two thirds of the way through--Volver offers the headiest pleasures imaginable.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

The movie opens as borderline Hitchcock, echoing the tone of the filmmaker's bravura "Bad Education" (2004), and then turns into a kind of overly conceptualized Tennessee Williams.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Although Volver has a tendency to stray too far down tangential paths, it is ultimately satisfying.

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

The movie is enjoyable, but not passionately engaging in the way we've come to expect from Almodóvar, and it leaves you somewhat cold in spite of the warmth of Cruz's galvanic performance.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Yet the film, against my wishes, left me unmoved.