Raimunda, her sister Sole and Raimunda's daughter Paula are visiting the small village of Alcanfor de las Infantas, in La Mancha region of Spain. Though they both now live in Madrid, the sisters grew up in the village. The three have returned to take care of the gravesite of their parents, who died in a fire a few years previous, and to visit their ailing, dementia-impaired aunt, also named Paula. They also call on Agustina, a next door neighbor who looks in on their aunt every day.

Raimunda and Paula live with Raimunda's husband, Paco, who Paula believes is her father. When Paco attempts to rape Paula, saying that he is not really her father, Paula stabs him to death in self-defense. Claiming her husband has run off, Raimunda hides his corpse in the deep-freezer of a shut-down nearby restaurant she is minding for the absent owner, Emilio. When members of a film crew come to the restaurant to cater a week's meals, the resourceful Raimunda strikes a deal to earn much needed money in her husband's absence.

Meanwhile, Sole returns to the village upon hearing that Aunt Paula has passed. At Aunt Paula's wake Agustina confesses to Sole that she heard Paula talking to the ghost of Sole's and Raimunda's mother, Irene. Encountering her mother's ghost herself in Aunt Paula's house, upon returning to Madrid, Sole finds that the ghost was stowed away in the trunk of her car. Sole lets Irene stay with her to assist at the illicit hair salon Sole operates out of her apartment, posing as a Russian immigrant who doesn't speak Spanish. The two conceal Irene's presence from Raimunda, who hates her mother.

Raimunda reveals to Paula that Paco was not her biological father, promising to tell her the whole story later. Leaving Paula with Sole, with the help of two paid suitably unquestioning female neighbors, Raimunda rents a van and transports the freezer containing the body to a spot by the river Júcar, where they bury it.

Meanwhile, diagnosed with terminal cancer, Agustina comes to Madrid for treatment. When Raimunda visits her in the hospital, Agustina asks Raimunda if she has seen her mother's ghost; Raimunda fears that Agustina too is exhibiting dementia. Agustina hopes the ghost will be able to tell her about her own mother, who disappeared three years before. While staying in Sole's apartment, Paula meets her grandmother's ghost, growing close to her. The next night, Agustina comes to the restaurant and reveals two startling secrets: her mother and Raimunda's father were having an affair, and her mother disappeared on the same day that Raimunda's parents died.

Sole reveals to a skeptical Raimunda that she has seen their mother's ghost, who is in the next room with Paula. Revealing the whole truth, Irene admits that she did not die in the fire. The reason for Raimunda and her estrangement, Irene has come to realize, is that Raimunda's father sexually abused Raimunda, resulting in the birth of Paula. Thus, Paula is Raimunda's daughter and her sister. Unaware of Raimunda's sexual abuse until Aunt Paula told her about it, Irene has never forgiven herself for being oblivious to it and believing Raimunda's pregnancy due to promiscuity. Finding her husband asleep in bed with another woman, Irene started the fire that killed them both. The ashes presumed to be Irene's were the ashes of Agustina's mother, the woman with whom Irene's husband was having an affair.

After the fire, Irene wandered for several days in the countryside until deciding to turn herself in. First, however, she wanted to say goodbye to Aunt Paula, with whom Irene had been living prior to setting the fire and who had lost the ability to look after herself. Paula welcomed Irene home as if nothing had happened, and Irene stayed, caring for her sister and expecting that the police would come soon to arrest her. Due to the closed nature of the superstitious community, however, the police never came. Accustomed to tales of the dead returning, the residents explained the rare sightings of Irene as ghost sightings.

The family reunites at Aunt Paula's house. Irene reveals her presence to Agustina, who continues to believe her to be a ghost. As penance, Irene pledges to stay in the village and care for Agustina as her cancer worsens, saying to Raimunda that it is the least she can do after killing Agustina's mother. Raimunda and her mother embrace and promise to repair their relationship, with Raimunda regularly visiting her mother at Agustina's house.

Top to bottom: Penélope Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lola Dueñas and Carmen Maura star in the film.

• Penélope Cruz as Raimunda, a mother living in Madrid's suburbs
• Carmen Maura as Irene Trujillo, the mother of Raimunda and Sole
• Yohana Cobo as Paula
• Blanca Portillo as Agustina
• Lola Dueñas as Soledad ("Sole")
• Chus Lampreave as Aunt Paula
• Antonio de la Torre as Paco
• María Isabel Díaz as Regina
• Carlos Blanco as Emilio
• Neus Sanz as Inés
• Leandro Rivera as Auxiliar Producción
• Yolanda Ramos as Presentadora TV

Volver was first developed by Pedro Almodóvar, based on a story actress Marisa Paredes told him during the production of their 1995 film The Flower of My Secret, another film set in the La Mancha region.^[5] The story revolved around a heartbroken Puerto Rican man who opts to kill his mother-in-law in hopes of reuniting with his beloved wife, who left him and broke off contact, at her mother's funeral. Owning a restaurant, he leaves it in his neighbour's care, when he is about to kill his victim.^[5] Fascinated by the story and its background, Almodóvar decided on incorporating elements of it into the screenplay of The Flower of My Secret, making it the plot of a movie-within-the-movie based on the main character's novel in the film.^[5] While working on the script for Volver, he would however settle on outlining the role of the neighbour Raimunda, as the film's central character, while Emilio, the Puerto Rican, eventually became a supporting role only.^[6]

Almodóvar says of the story that "it is precisely about death...More than about death itself, the screenplay talks about the rich culture that surrounds death in the region of La Mancha, where I was born. It is about the way (not tragic at all) in which various female characters, of different generations, deal with this culture".^[7]

Penélope Cruz was the first reported to have landed one of the starring roles in Volver, having previously worked with Almodóvar on his films Live Flesh (1997) and All About My Mother (1999).^[8] In preparing for her role, the actress watched Italian neorealism films from the 1950s, many of them starring Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, to study "the Italian maggiorate" that Almodóvar envisioned for her performance in the film.^[5] Cruz, who had to wear a prosthetic bottom while filming, noted the role of Raimunda as "the best gift an actress can get".^[9]

Carmen Maura, the star of Almodóvar's debut Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) and five additional films with the director, was the first to be cast in the film alongside Cruz.^[8] Her engagement marked her first collaboration with Almodóvar after a period of 18 years and a reported fallout during the production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1989).^[10] Maura commented on the "borderline character" of Irene as a "very complicated [role to play]".^[10]

Shooting locations included Almagro.^[11]

The tango "Volver" by Carlos Gardel with lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera is converted to flamenco and is sung in the movie with the voice of Estrella Morente and lip synced by Penélope Cruz. The dance tune playing at the party prior to Raimunda's lip syncing is called "Good Thing" by the British three-piece indie-dance combo Saint Etienne.

In the US alone, the film had made $12,897,993 (15.4% of the total) at the box office after 26.4 weeks of release in 689 theatres. The box office figure from the rest of the world is somewhere in the region of $71,123,059 (84.6% of the total) according to Box Office Mojo. The total worldwide gross is estimated at $84,021,052.^[12]

As of 22 January 2007 the film had grossed $12,241,181 at the Spanish box office.^[13]

Fotogramas, Spain's top film magazine, gave it a five-star rating.^[14] Upon its US release, A. O. Scott made it an "NYT Critics' Pick" and wrote:^[15]

To relate the details of the narrative—death, cancer, betrayal, parental abandonment, more death—would create an impression of dreariness and woe. But nothing could be further from the spirit of Volver which is buoyant without being flip, and consoling without ever becoming maudlin. Mr. Almodóvar acknowledges misfortune—and takes it seriously—from a perspective that is essentially comic. Very few filmmakers have managed to smile so convincingly in the face of misery and fatality: Jean Renoir and Billy Wilder come immediately to mind, and Mr. Almodóvar, if he is not yet their equal, surely belongs in their company. Volver is often dazzling in its artifice—José Luis Alcaine's ripe cinematography, Alberto Iglesias's suave, heart-tugging score— but it is never false. It draws you in, invites you to linger and makes you eager to return.

Roger Ebert gave it his highest rating of four, calling it "enchanting, gentle, transgressive" and notes "Almodovar is above all a director who loves women—young, old, professional, amateur, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, dead, alive. Here his cheerful plot combines life after death with the concealment of murder, success in the restaurant business, the launching of daughters and with completely serendipitous solutions to (almost) everyone's problems".^[16]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 91% rating from critics, based on 158 positive reviews out of 173 critics, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's consensus states :"Volver catches director Pedro Almodóvar and star Penélope Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film".^[17] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 38 critics.^[18]

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2006.^[19]

• 2nd – Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
• 3rd – Glenn Kenny, Premiere
• 3rd – Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times
• 3rd – Richard Corliss, Time magazine
• 3rd – Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• 4th – Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
• 4th – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
• 4th – Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter
• 5th – Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
• 6th – Claudia Puig, USA Today
• 6th – Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
• 7th – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
• 8th – A. O. Scott, The New York Times
• 8th – Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club
• 8th – Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
• 8th – Stephen Holden, The New York Times
• 9th – Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
• 10th – David Ansen, Newsweek

  General top ten

• Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times
• Carrie Rickey, The Philadelphia Inquirer
• Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
• Liam Lacey and Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail

Sight & Sound magazine's critics poll named Volver the 2nd-best film of 2006.^[20] In 2019, The Guardian ranked the film 46th in its 100 best films of the 21st century list.^[21] In 2025, the New York Times' "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" ranked Volver at number Eighty.^[22] It was also one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of the list, finishing at number 197.^[23]

Volver received a standing ovation when it was screened as part of the official selection at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Best Screenplay award as well as the award for Best Actress — which was shared by the six stars of the film.^[3]

• List of submissions to the 79th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Spanish submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Spanish Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Lead Actress