Fridae

In Spanish with English subtitles

Some of the best directors of women's movies have been gay men. From the late-and-great George Cukor (The Women), Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), to gifted contemporary filmmakers such as Francois Ozon (8 Women), Stephen Daldry (The Hours, (Billy Elliot(), Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) and Rob Marshall (Memoirs of a Geisha), gay men have excelled in depicting women's plights and concerns.

Heck, even the creators of TV's Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives are fags.

But among the many gay directors alive today, none is more talented or original than Spanish cinema's living treasure Pedro Almodovar. His earlier works like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and Matador were stylish, subversive films that defied easy categorisation. They combined farce, melodrama, kitsch and pornography to produce utterly outrageous stories and over-the-top characters.

Maturing as an artist, his later films such as All About My Mother and Talk To Her were emotionally wrenching, psychologically astute films that examined human relationships with depth and subtlety. His latest film, Volver, is an instance of that.

Volver is a wonderful movie that celebrates femininity and female solidarity. It stars Penelope Cruz (who was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but lost out to Helen Mirren) as a cleaner struggling to support her useless husband and teenage daughter. One night, she comes home from work to find her husband dead in the kitchen. Their daughter had stabbed him after he tried to rape her.

Instead of calling the police, Penelope's immediate instinct is to protect her daughter. She tells her child that if anyone finds out, she - Penelope - will confess to the crime. The women wrap the body and hide it in the freezer of a vacant restaurant. Meanwhile, the ghost of Penelope's mother has apparently returned from the dead to reveal a deep dark secret about the past, a secret that would shake Penelope's life once more.

Volver has touches of camp, suspense, melodrama and the supernatural, but it is essentially a masterful drama about mother/daughter relationships. It is also an affecting portrait of working-class women who, disappointed by men and their patriarchal society, choose to empower themselves instead of becoming victims. Indeed, very few men appear in this film. When they do, they are merely tolerated, ignored or - in that one instance - killed by the women.

That Almodovar could paint such a compassionate portrait of women comes as no surprise. Hence the real revelation here is Penelope Cruz.

After years of languishing English-language flops like Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Vanilla Sky, Gothika and All The Pretty Horses, it's a real pleasure to have her return to her home turf and act in her native Spanish tongue. Decked out in hoop earrings and gorgeous cleavage-baring outfits, she is the classic maternal sexpot - earthy, embracing, confident and sexy. It's no wonder that she got the Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Her flesh-and-blood performance is her best ever.