Review: Julieta

Julieta (15)

Spain 2016 99 mins Dir: Pedro Almodovar Starring: Adriana Ugarte, Emma Suarez, Inma Cuesta, Daniel Grao, Rossy de Palma

A psychological connect-the-dots adapted from three Alice Munro short stories that plays out on a lush, primary-coloured canvas, Julieta sees a back-on-form Pedro Almodovar deliver his most engaged and engrossing drama in years. A far cry from the tiresome high-flying camp of 2013’s I’m So Excited, Julieta brings the drama firmly down to Earth and is all the better for remainining intensely focused on one woman, brilliantly played across past and present by the dynamite duo of Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suarez.

Beginning with a breath-catching close-up of fluttering red fabric set to Alberto Iglesias’ ripping score, we’re introduced to the eponymous Julieta (Suarez), a woman in the twilight years of her life about to leave Madrid for a new life in Portugal with her boyfriend Lorenzo (Dario Grandetti). However a chance meeting with young woman Beatriz (Michelle Jenner) leads to a key revelation: the latter is a friend of Julieta’s daughter Antia, a figure from whom, we find out, our title character has been estranged for several years.

This chance meeting leads to a turbulent upsurge of emotion and most of the rest of the drama plays out as a confessional, Julieta penning an emotive narrative to the daughter-in-absentia that fills us in from the latter’s birth to the tragic series of events involving Antia’s father Xoan (Daniel Grao) that led to their mother/daughter bond being frayed and, ultimately, torn asunder. In Almodovar’s usual style however the story traverses a host of time periods, genres and moods, effortlessly gliding from tender poignancy to melodramatic camp to Hitchcockian intrigue without ever skipping a beat.

The contradictory nature of the movie, characteristic of the director’s usual approach, is key to its very success: Almodovar’s latest is nothing less than a masterful collage of emotion, one plugged into the elusive fabric of life itself and writ large in every aspect of the production. From the richly vibrant hues of Antxon Gomez’ production design (in which the apparently fleeting presence of a sickly green bag is all the more powerful for its stark contrast against the rest of the colour palette) to the smooth cinematography from Jean-Claude Larrieu, the style is the substance.

It’s also rich with allusions to the director’s previous work: flashing back to her first meeting with Xoan on a train, Julieta recalls him saying that his current wife is in a coma, surely a reference to his masterful 2002 drama Talk to Her (the spectre of Hitchcock is again also prominent). Yet what holds it together is the palpably believable integrity of its central character: Julieta, we find out, is no angel but someone who has paid dearly for her bad decisions and who has allowed guilt and remorse to consume her life, a flawed figure but a deeply empathetic one.

Yet despite the story’s darkness and melancholy, it also recognises that guilt and sadness can also prove to be powerful bonding experiences, capable of tearing people apart and also bringing them back together. Thanks to the resonant performances from Suarez and, especially, Ugarte, we really believe it.