Timing Out: The Politics of Death and Gender in Almodóvar’s Volver

Abstract

From the pistol-packing Mother Superior of Entre tinieblas to the neo-noir thrills of La mala educación (and a host of other films in between), death has long been a staple of Pedro Almodóvar’s filmic oeuvre. But so often death is read as a finalizing dead end, the overwhelmingly negative result of bad health, bad circumstances, or bad luck, when it has the potential to be read as productive and engendering possibility. This article claims that Almodóvar resists the foreclosing negativity of death in order to create a politics out of lack and loss. This is seen most notably in his 2006 film Volver, which ultimately provides new ways of thinking about family, gender, and life itself.