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The latest feature from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is centered on 50-something classics scholar Julieta (Emma Suárez), who is about to relocate from Madrid to Portugal. However, when she bumps into someone who recently saw her daughter, Antía, while traveling abroad, the encounter sends Julieta into a tailspin, as she hasn’t seen or heard from her child in years. Abruptly dropping her boyfriend and moving back into her old apartment building on the off chance that Antía might try to contact her, she begins penning a journal-length letter to her daughter, in an effort to illuminate the past 30 years and how things went so dreadfully awry between the two of them.
The film is accordingly a flashback-driven character melodrama, with the titular heroine providing narration for her own life. Almodóvar’s depiction of how Julieta (Adriana Ugarte in the first half, Suárez later) arrived at her current circumstances is episodic—almost cheekily so at times—focusing on pivotal moments in her personal saga of love, family, and loss. While ostensibly an explanation and apology to Antía, Julieta’s reflections are partly psychological detective work, an attempt by a middle-aged woman to sift through her life for her most fateful decisions and mistakes.
Almodóvar presents Julieta’s story in a slightly mystery- or thriller-like mode. Characters shadow and eavesdrop on one another, vital clues are overlooked, and a wisp of violent peril always seems to be looming. Indeed, while Julieta is less lurid than many of Almodóvar's prior films, it feels at times like a Brian De Palma feature is lurking at the film’s periphery. (Or perhaps it’s just that during the early flashbacks Ugarte is a dead ringer for Melanie Griffith in Body Double.) Regardless, Julieta is characteristically rich, engrossing storytelling from one of the living greats of woman-focused drama.
Julieta opens Friday, January 27 at Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema, 210 Plaza Frontenac.
