Julieta
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Adriana Ugarte, Rossy de Palma, Michelle Jenner
Duration: 99 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

After venturing into the psychological darkness of man’s obsession with success in The Skin I Live In and highly camp comedy with I’m So Excited, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar returns to familiar territory with Julieta, a poignant and passionate study of a lonely woman who is grieving over some terrible losses in life.

Almodóvar has a proclivity and a remarkably sensitive flair for creating flawed, complex female characters who are also, above all else, real and relatable and with Julieta he makes a very welcome return to the genre.

The film that bears his protagonist’s name unfolds over two time periods – 2016, as the older, introspective Julieta (Emma Suárez) navigates through the waters of pain and regret and her younger, more carefree incarnation (Adriana Ugarte), a teacher of classical literature, who we first meet on a train taking her to a new post. Her life takes a completely different path during the journey.

Throughout the course of the film Julieta examines her relationships with those who have impacted her life from the moment she steps on the train that fateful evening. Reading quietly in her compartment, she rebuffs the pathetic attempts by a fellow passenger to chat.

In doing so she meets the dashing fisherman Xoan. Although the train journey ends in tragedy, she eventually marries Xoan and they have a daughter, Antia.

It is a tale told honestly and flowingly in a way that audiences can relate to

Their life is idyllic until Antia’s teen years, when tragedy strikes again. After mother and daughter leave their fishing village to move to Madrid, at age 18 Antia abruptly ups and leaves, never to be heard from again.

In the present day, Julieta ponders whether it is she who has pushed her loved ones away from her, her guilt continues to consume her, and when she unexpectedly gets news about Antia, she refuses to move to Portugal with her current boyfriend, the sympathetic Lorenzo. Thereby, she throws away her chance of starting over.

It is an insightful, authentic and moving study of the decisions we make in life, oblivious to the consequences – of the harsh hands life sometimes deals us, of the inability to cope and of the inner strength that sometimes seems to come from nowhere to help us to survive.

It is a tale told honestly and flowingly in a way that audiences can relate to. So much so, the sequences dealing with Julieta’s ailing mother and straying father, while on one hand adding layers to the character, sometimes detract from the main storyline.

The younger Julieta, Ugarte, with her spiky blond hair and youthful mode of dress is a spirited independent woman. A popular teacher with a bright future ahead, the actress embodies that spirit as easily as she does the creeping doubts about her life and relationship with her husband... in the same way Suarez does when she takes over the character.

Although the two actresses who play the different incarnations resemble each other only slightly, they effortlessly embody the spirit of the character. The transformation from one to the other is done in an ingenious yet simple way by the director. Both Ugarte and Suarez draw you in with their performances, embodying the joys, sorrows and challenges of one who has loved and lost and who struggles to shed the constraints of grief.

They are both new to Almodóvar’s canon, but he claims they both now form part of his “particular Olympus where they rub shoulders with Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and Cecilia Roth, my muses.”

The striking Rossy de Palma, another favourite of his, plays the part of the dour Marian, Xoan’s disapproving housekeeper, who plays a significant part in an event that affect Julieta’s life so catastrophically.

As is typical with the director, the visuals play an equally important part in the film. The train is highly symbolic, as are the various places Julieta resides in throughout her life... from the warm and comfortable seaside home she shares with her family, to the charmless apartment she – or rather Antia – selects in the bustling Madrid city centre, to the stark modern place we find her in as the film starts.

Almodóvar regular Alberto Iglesias provides an unobtru-sive soundtrack to heighten the atmosphere.