Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, Volver, was screened in a few suburban locations last month, but it has just opened on two screens at the E Street Cinema. Fans of the legendary Spanish director do not need a review to tell them to see this film. However, those who do not know Almodóvar’s work, or who have had a bad experience with it, should give this excellent movie a chance. It has all of the positive qualities of his earlier films — the sometimes off-color humor; the idolization of the eternal feminine; the mixture of fantasy and reality; the flavor of Spain — just this time without the drag queens and transsexual prostitutes.

The heart of the movie takes place in a small village in La Mancha, the natal region of both Don Quixote and Pedro Almodóvar. Two sisters, Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Soledad (Lola Dueñas), travel back and forth between their new homes in Madrid and that little town, later identified as Alcanfor de Las Infantas, the town in Spain with the highest rate of insanity among its inhabitants. The village is fictional (it was actually shot in a place called Almagro, near where Almodóvar himself was born), but the region is indeed arid and windswept, and as often happens where there are sinister winds, fires and madness abound. The frequent shots of wind turbines, generating electricity, again recall the ingenioso hidalgo of Cervantes, who mistook the 16th-century predecessors of these modern windmills for giants.

The sisters return to the village, after the death of their parents in a fire, to tend the family grave and look in on their senile aunt, Tía Paula (Chus Lampreave). Never far from this superstitious world is the presence of their mother, Irene (Carmen Maura), whose spirit the villagers believe is watching over Tía Paula. It is a touching reunion for Almodóvar and Carmen Maura, who was one of the director’s favorites in the 1980s, starring in Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios and ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!. Along with Raimunda’s daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo), we have women admired by Almodóvar over the course of three generations, and they form an excellent ensemble cast, collectively awarded the “Best Actress” award when Volver was screened at Cannes. The few men in the film are small in stature, merely obstacles to be overcome.