 |
| Adriana Ugarte and Rossy de Palma in Julieta |
Younger Julieta: Adriana Ugarte
Xoan: Daniel Grao
Ava: Inma Cuesta
Lorenzo: Darío Grandinetti
Beatriz: Michelle Jenner
Marian: Rossy de Palma
Julieta's Mother: Susi Sánchez
Beatriz's Mother: Pilar Castro
Antía: Blanca Parés
Young Antía: Priscilla Delgado
Young Beatriz: Sara Jiménez
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar
Based on stories by Alice Munro
Cinematography: Jean-Claude Larrieu
Production design: Antxón Gómez
Music: Alberto Iglesias
Julieta is low-key for a film by Pedro Almodóvar. It has the familiar bright pops of color and the characteristic involvement in the lives of women, but it rarely surprises or startles you with either its events or outbursts from its characters. Its use of two actresses to play the same title character has been likened to Luis Buñuel's casting two actresses in the same role in That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), but Buñuel's film features two very different-looking actresses in scenes that are occurring in the same time period, a disorienting effect when Buñuel switches from one to the other. In Julieta, Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte play the title character at different periods in her life, and although the two actresses don't look very much alike, there's little disorientation when one takes on the role from the other. Almodóvar has said that he didn't want to mess around with old-age makeup, and he's right. As the film begins, the older Julieta is packing to move to Lisbon with Lorenzo when a chance encounter on the street with Beatriz, an old friend of her daughter, Antía, causes her to abruptly chance her mind and stay in Madrid. We learn that Julieta and Antía have been estranged for many years -- the daughter even has children that Julieta has never met. In hopes that Antía will make a move to reconciliation, Julieta even moves to an apartment in the same building in which they lived when Antía was growing up. And she begins to write the story of how she met Antía's father, Xoan, initiating a flashback in which Ugarte takes over the role of Julieta from Suárez. Like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Almodóvar has always had strong ties to the films of Douglas Sirk, with their tortured love affairs and strong, beleaguered female protagonists, and like Sirk, both filmmakers use melodrama as a vehicle for social comment, particularly on the roles of women. Julieta touches on the still-pervasive and often repressive role of religion in Spanish life, but the film isn't out to make a point about it other than incidentally. The real focus of the film is on the unraveling of the story of Julieta herself as she comes to terms with female friendships and rivalries. The men in the film, from the passionate Xoan to the almost sexless Lorenzo, are decidedly secondary, there only to stir the plot and to spur Julieta's involvement with the other women in their lives. It's a splendidly crafted movie, but it feels at the end like one that was begun without a clear destination.
Starz
