Death, rebirth and, of course, motherhood are themes in Pedro Almodóvar's new drama, set and filmed in his native La Mancha. The director tells Donald Clarke about his own mother's reaction to his early work, fears of dying, and padding out Penélope Cruz

VOLVER, the new film from Pedro Almodóvar, continues an extraordinary artistic purple patch that has, over the last decade, included such triumphs as All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Bad Education. In the 20 years since the Spaniard first caught the world's attention with brasher, camper entertainments, his narratives have become steadily more disciplined and his themes markedly more universal. Volver, a tale of death and resurrection among a varied group of working-class women, combines broad melodrama with classical tragedy to quite exhilarating effect. But hang on a moment. Where are the cavorting transsexuals and outbursts of sexual violence we enjoyed in Matador, What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Tie Me Up Tie Me Down? Almodóvar's new film contains no sex and - though there is a murder off-screen - no real violence. Dear Lord. Has Pedro actually become respectable?

"It is funny for me to have this kind of respect," Almodóvar laughs. "My films were very independent in nature at first and I never really considered this notion of becoming more respectable. Then just recently in Spain they gave me this very important award - like the Nobel Prize - that is normally given to novelists and poets. It is strange. I never thought I would become that sort of person."

Almodóvar, now 56 years old, is certainly starting to look a little like a reputable man of the arts. His hair, though still thick and tufty, has turned entirely grey. Never a thin fellow, he now has a sizeable paunch. Pedro is, however, as ebullient and warm as ever. Making only occasional use of a translator, he delights in constructing comprehensive, thoughtful answers to your questions.

Listening to his neat, entertaining monologues, one could be in no doubt as to his considerable gifts as a storyteller.

"You do have to change your lifestyle as you get older," he says. "I am doing that, but I miss my lifestyle from before. I really have not yet found anything to replace what I had before. I had a much wilder life in the 1990s than I have now. I think it is terrible when you have to make the choice between pure physical emotion and your health. But you do."

Physical emotion? Is Almodóvar suggesting he has given up sex? "No. I mean drugs and drinking and staying out during the whole night. The typical crazy wild life. I decided to try and find those emotions in what I read, in my friends, in my work. But it's difficult. When I was young I thought: when I am 60 my necessities will be very different. As I get near that age, I realise they are similar to what they were when I was 25."

Almodóvar was raised by working-class parents in Spain's La Mancha region. Volver, which begins with a multitude of women tending their loved ones' graves, brings him back to that conservative locale. Telling the story of two sisters (played by Penélope Cruz and Lola Dueñas) as they seek to cope with the apparent reappearance of their late mother, the film, though set in the present, allows its characters few of the trappings of the modern world. We do see the occasional mobile phone, but Volver suggests that little has changed in the area since the director was a child.

"No, it really hasn't changed much," he agrees. "In the little village they still have the same costume. The culture of death and of mourning is much as it was. The scenes set in Madrid show, of course, a multi-ethnic society with modern ways. But those areas of La Mancha change little."

And what about the profusion of women? Volver, positing the notion that relationships between females bind societies, allows barely any speaking roles for men. As does so much of Almodóvar's work, the film, whose female cast collectively won an acting prize at Cannes, says a great deal about the worrisome business of being a mother. One suspects that the director's own mum, who died a few years ago, is herself being resurrected in Volver.

"Yes, she remains a presence in my mind and in my films," he says. "The family always was a theme. You can make a thousand different films with the family as subject. My childhood was entirely surrounded by women. I don't remember men around me. They were working or they were in the bars or whatever."

What can his mother, by his own admission a conservative figure, have made of his early career? Pedro, educated badly by Salesian friars, moved to Madrid at the tender age of 16. He soon got a job at the telephone company, but was always more interested in immersing himself in the nascent artistic underground. He bought a movie camera. He played in a few rock bands.

Taking advantage of the liberalisation that followed the death of Franco in 1975, Almodóvar, now flamboyantly gay, began moving away from experimental Super-8 shorts towards narrative features. Early films such as Labyrinth of Passion and Dark Habits featured murder, debauchery and, of course, naughty lesbian nuns. Poor old Mrs Almodóvar. This really was not her world.

"She didn't see my early movies, but she imagined there was much in my movies she would not like. She was very smart and modern in some ways. But she was also a typical rural woman. She didn't respect my career. When I left the telephone company she was very concerned. Making films was, as far as she was concerned, not a proper occupation. But when I had made about 10 films she began to see that I was successful and she liked that. I really think the best time of her life was the final years when she admitted I had made it."

Almodóvar's mother even made some effective cameos in his later films. As the years progressed it would have taken a very stubborn woman indeed to deny Pedro's galloping success. Since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown became an international hit in 1988, Almodóvar has remained one of that small band of non-Anglophone directors whose films manage commercial releases throughout the planet. Wrapping broad melodramatic plots around sincere emotional cores, Almodóvar succeeds in pleasing both mainstream audiences and highfalutin critics.

I wonder does he fear he may wake up one morning bereft of inspiration? Plenty of directors (and writers and pop stars and comedians) have, after an apparently unstoppable string of masterpieces, suddenly and irretrievably lost their touch.

"Oh, fear is always present in this work," he says. "It is a continuous adventure. There is never any real security. Now, this is my 16th movie, but I still don't think I know how to do it. Every movie is different. Every movie is a new adventure. I was lucky to be inspired for the last five movies, and every time I embark on a new one I am frightened."

Almodóvar is, however, happy to explain that, following the numerous logistical difficulties that beset the production of Bad Education, Volver was the most enjoyable of his films to make. It helped that he was re-united with two of his favourite collaborators.

He and Carmen Maura, who appeared in his first commercial feature, Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón, back in 1980, had barely spoken since falling out at the 1988 Oscars ceremony. She returns here as the resurrected mother. "We were a passionate couple - an artistic couple, I mean - and these things happen among couples," he says now. "We went our own ways, then some years later we sorted it out."

Penélope Cruz and Almodóvar last worked together on 1999's All About My Mother, since which time she has made a not wholly successful attempt to conquer Hollywood. Penélope, blissfully free of Tom Cruise's tiny gripping hands, is back in top form in Volver. But what has become of her bottom? It's huge. It transpires that the director had the Cruz derriere reinforced with padding.

"Penélope, like other characters, represents the mother in the movie," he says. "The mothers I remember from my childhood had big asses. Giving her the bigger bottom made her walk much closer to the earth. Not only did it change her line, but it changed her walk. And that was very important for this character."

Still, though Volver was clearly made in a blissful spirit, it is, to an uncomfortable degree, concerned with death and dying. The tending of graves is a continuing theme; one of the sisters' friends contracts cancer. It is hard to avoid the notion that Almodóvar, now well into middle age, is, here, contemplating his own mortality.

"I never thought about death before," he says. "I was making so many films over the last few years I didn't have a moment. But I did recently begin to think about it. I have lived over half my life and now I think about death more or less every day. The women in La Mancha co-exist naturally with death, without drama or tragedy. For them it is natural."

He shakes his head at his own weakness. "But I have a problem with death. I simply cannot accept it. When I do think about it I feel like a child before it. This is one aspect of my life where I just have not grown up."

Volver opens on August 25th