Reviews

Here is the supreme example of a film about show business, as enjoyable as Singin' in the Rain but with much greater depth in the portrayal of the characters and in its description of how the work of show biz gets done. Possibly you have at least to be able to tolerate Gilbert and Sullivan to enjoy this movie, but if you have any interest in backstage dramas that are both moving and believable this is the film to see, the apotheosis of all those movies that arose from the seedbed of Broadway Melody. For once we get account both plausible and entertaining (and informative) of how creators of the arts actually do their work, though we learn much more about the words (Gilbert's work) than about the music (Sullivan's) and a good deal about the business that goes on to produce a musical show, in this case the first performance of The Mikado. The film is stage-struck and yet never loses a kind of social realism, recognizing that to put on an operetta requires the support of many people who are normally invisible. In this sense Topsy-Turvy is especially humane and even democratic in its sympathies. This humane perspective is evident in the very opening, when the screen shows what it takes to get the auditorium of the theater ready for a performance. This opening, rich in red velvet, has a kind of simple grandeur and prepares the way for the much more developed scenes later in the film when Gilbert and Sullivan negotiate with the management of the company over ticklish questions involving the conflict between contractual obligations and the presumed spontaneity of artistic creativity. These scenes in the office of the D'Oyly Carte company are intense, wonderfully acted, and full of revelation and subtle humor, but so is the rest of the movie, with its willingness to acknowledge that it's imperfect people, not plaster giants, who produce the shows we love. Gilbert and Sullivan are both quirky and sometimes unpleasant. Both, for instance, are vain, though in quite different ways. Sullivan is a vivacious,gregarious, strutting bon vivant, Gilbert shy, frequently embarrassed,and remote, an artist full of satire and yet seemingly out of touch with everyone, especially himself, and when, at the end, he tries to talk with his wife on a night of triumph the film has the courage and grace to avoid every cliché and to focus on the moving complexities of their marriage. And with all this wealth, the film offers many splendid scenes from The Mikado itself. There are no other show-biz movies nearly as rich and human.

I've been surprised by the enthusiastic response to this film. It seemed dull to me, much as I enjoyed looking at Penelope Cruz, and the plot details often poorly worked out. It also seemed like an intensely sexist film: if the gender roles were reversed, almost everyone with any sense would be up in arms complaining the movie is intensely misogynist. It's not just that both the principal males are portrayed as complete jerks and sexual predators, but also that the women are portrayed as almost flawless, forming a utopian community which lacks conflict of any kind and which rests on relentless generosity and good humor. Utopias are notoriously dull and this one turns out to be no exception. But it's also interesting to notice what happens (and here comes the plot giveaway, though it refers to a very early scene) when the teenage daughter kills her father. (1) Her mother rushes to take responsibility for it and(2) the daughter seems to suffer almost no remorse (and in fact her emotional life then disappears from the film). It's not quite a glorified killing, though Aldomovar's camera lingers on the blood in a bloodthirsty way, as though it makes an attractive painting, and then it's soaked up and out of sight without bloodying either daughter or mom, neither materially nor emotionally. Later the film reveals another killing, again by a woman of a man, , and once again it is a killing which the film implicitly endorses.In short, Volver is an ideologically-driven film with an unpleasant and in fact a repugnant ideology, and so I write an ideological critique. But apart from that, it's just not very interesting. It has none of the depth of, say, Aldomovar's Talk to Her, which I loved.