Review: Julieta

Loosely adapting a trio of Alice Munro stories ("Chance," "Soon" and "Silence"), Pedro Almodóvar's latest offering may be his most conventional and purest dramatic work to date. Tender and acoustic in comparison to his predominantly electric renditions of female-centric, high-camp melodramas, Julieta is an affecting rumination of aging, grief, guilt, and motherhood.

The film centers around Julieta - two versions of her, to be exact - the older Julieta (Emma Suárez), whose face and spirit have been eroded by life's tragedies, and the younger Julieta (Adriana Ugarte), ready to embrace all that life has to offer. They could be two completely different women, strangers to one another, but they are one and the same. Almodóvar strongly suggests that life's greatest triumphs and especially tragedies can birth almost completely new selves; this is evidenced by the extraordinary transition of Julieta emerging from a towel as her older self, cinematically slipping off her skin.

When we first encounter Julieta, she is about to start a new chapter in her life until a chance encounter with Bea (Michelle Jenner) unravels her already fragile state. Bea reveals that she has run into Antia, whose 13-year-long absence has defined much of Julieta's life. Antia is now a mother of three and aware that Julieta resides in Madrid. This knowledge results in Julieta abandoning her plans to move to Portugal with her partner Lorenzo (Talk to Her's Dario Grandinetti) and instead entrench herself in a different apartment in the building in which she raised Antia in the hopes that her daughter might make contact.

In the apartment, Julieta recalls her past via a series of letters to her daughter. Primarily, the fateful train ride involving a man's suicide and the beginning of her relationship with fisherman Xoan (Daniel Grao), whose marriage to his comatose wife mirrors that of Julieta's father to his ailing wife. Like Xoan, Julieta's father has taken up with another woman though Julieta is oblivious to the parallels with her own situation. In much the same way, Antia will be blind to the depths of her mother's guilt and depression over Xoan's tragic death until she herself undergoes a similar loss.

Much of Julieta is Greek myth as thriller, ripe with symbolism and suspenseful intrigue. What's remarkable about Julieta is how Almodóvar handles his character's emotional complexities with a Hitchcockian touch. There are blatant references to Hitchcock - the strangers on the train bound by death, the Mrs. Danvers-like figure played by Almodovar regular Rossy de Palma, even the recurring doubling motif, but especially Alberto Iglesias' Bernard Herrmannesque score - yet this film cannot be mistaken as anyone else's other than Almodovar's. Though not as riotously deployed as in previous films, the stylistics here are no less striking - the pulsating red fabric in the opening credits; the stark black and white painting that serves as backdrop for Julieta telling Antia of Xoan's death; the almost Klimt-like dressing gown whose fragmented pattern not only recalls the nature of the film's narrative but also the multitude of memories that inhabit us for all our lives despite all our efforts to erase them.

Julieta

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar

Written by: Pedro Almodóvar; based on the short stories "Chance," "Soon" and "Silence" by Alice Munro

Starring: Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Michelle Jenner, Rossy de Palma, Inma Cuesta, Daniel Grao, Dario Grandinetti