JULIETA – Review

Left to right: Daniel Grao as Xoan and Adriana Ugarte as Earlier Julieta
@ El Deseo, in Pedro Almodovar’s JULIETA. Photo by Manolo Pavón, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

2016 certainly turned out to be a good year for films, particularly dramas, and JULETA is one the last of those to come to local screens. A nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in the upcoming Oscars, the Spanish-language JULIETA is simply one of director Pedro Almodovar’s best – a visually lush, beautifully constructed, haunting mystery about love and loss, tied up with a satisfying but unexpected ending.

The acclaimed Spanish director’s latest film is a drama in a familiar vein for him, a tale of a woman – a mother – in crisis, yet JULIETA is brilliantly fresh at the same time. Julieta (Emma Suarez) is a successful, beautiful woman living in Madrid, who is on the verge of leaving her home of many years as well as a breakup with her long-time lover Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti). But Julieta’s plans are disrupted by a chance encounter that brings back a flood of memories of her daughter Antia, who vanished mysteriously as a teenager many years earlier. The news that an old friend saw Antia, even spoke to her, sparks a renewed search and exploration of why her daughter disappeared. The search leads us into a flashback of Julieta’s life.

The story unfolds like a mystery, and there is a strong dose of Hitchcock in Almodovar’s film. The Hitchcockian flavor is not just in the idea of a chance encounter sending a character on a life-altering adventure, but in Hitchcock references sprinkled throughout the film. JULIETA is also a film of stunning visual beauty, under the masterful hand of director of photography Jean-Claude Larrieu. The film’s gorgeous imagery seduces the viewer but it is Almodovar’s intriguing mystery and affecting characters that really hook us.

Two actresses play Julieta, younger and older, and both turn in strong performances. Having erased evidence of her daughter from her life, Julieta is now gripped by uncertainty and guilt as she renews her quest for Antia, a search that reveals how little the mother knew of her daughter and only child. In flashback, young Julieta (Adriana Ugarte) meets a man named Xoan (Daniel Grao) as a stranger on a train but, unlike Hitchcock’s film of that name, the result is romance, not murder. The sequence opens with Julieta gazing out the train window, transfixed by a graceful stag running along side the train. When the stag vanishes and the train comes to a sudden halt, she worries that the deer is the cause, a concern that plays a role in the connection she makes with Xoan, the man who becomes her husband. Almodovar skillfully blends a sense of mystery and beauty with themes of fate, life and death, all within the sequence.

Almodovar is a master storyteller, and his powers are in full-bloom here. He both directed and wrote the film, based on three stories by novelist Alice Munro. The film is filled with unexpected twists, so that the audience never knows where it will go next. As the older Julieta, Emma Suarez is brilliant, a strong, sure woman now tormented by questions – why did her daughter vanish as a teenager, where has she been, what part did her mother play in that decision, why has she never contacted her? The director explores all that, un-spooling the story with a sure hand, keeping the audience in suspense.

Women in crisis, particularly mothers, are one of the director’s favorite themes, as are campy, tongue-in-cheek, soap opera-style comic tales, like his last film. Here Almodovar returns to gripping, searing drama, in the vein of award-winners such as TALK TO HER and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER. With its Hitchcockian elements, JULIETA is one of Almodovar’s most accessible films but it also has great depth, as a thought-provoking film for parents particularly but it is also a moving love story, and a tale of how chance events can change have life-altering results.

Whether one is a longtime fan of Almodovar or not, JULIETA is a must-see drama, well worth that effort to read subtitles, and certainly a film worthy of an Oscar.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars