It’s difficult to portray incest and child abuse as anything less than monstrous, and most films circling the sin are so depressing they leave you in an emotional comatose (see “”Oldboy,”” “”Mystic River””). Because such topics are meant to elicit grief or horror, the frequent cause for laughter in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest seems a little off-mark. Perhaps the very seduction of “”Volver”” is its capacity to breathe life into trauma without spitting sorrow across the screen.

And the story’s not just about incest — at its core, “”Volver”” explores death and the return of things long left buried. The many mysteries of the film converge at the cruxes of mortality as each secret becomes the key to unlocking another: A father is murdered and a dear aunt passes, unearthing a dusty history and bringing a mother back to life.

Life in “”Volver”” straddles between traditional and trashy, halfway between the nestled casas of provincial La Mancha and the darker, urban ghetto just outside Madrid. Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Irene (Carmen Maura) play two generations of Spanish housewives tied to a domestic existence mired in abuse.

Exhibiting the tense ferocity extant in film noir heroines, Cruz doesn’t immediately mold to the maternal role she plays. Her sexuality is hard to overlook, and the camera’s frequent panning of cleavage doesn’t strengthen the argument otherwise. But Cruz performs with all the convincing authority and tenderness of a mama, even if she reads a bit more like a mamacita.

Though Almodóvar’s film is scandalous in its irreverent humor, he succeeds in exploring with the audience life after tragedy. In the end, the story of a mother, her daughter and her daughter’s daughter are each woven into a tapestry of shared disasters — but these are disasters buried with laughter. Secrets can be funny, and history can be unwrapped like candy, revealing sweeter, thicker layers for the tasting.