Julieta (2016): A Woman’s Life, Distilled

 Julieta is the twentieth full length feature film by director Pedro Almodóvar. I’m no expert, having seen only three other Almodóvar films over the years, but so far the critical consensus is that Julieta is a return to form after a few misses, his best picture since Volver in 2006. Almodóvar films are about people and relationships more than plot, his stories serving as frames for exploration of personalities and themes. The themes in Julieta include love, death, motherhood, grief, friendship, abandonment and especially guilt and uncertainty – in short, the experiential and emotional complications of the eponymous protagonist’s life. Almodóvar might say that the overarching subject is fate.

We follow Julieta’s life over a period of thirty years or so, from an independent twenty-something college-level classics instructor to a desperate fifty-something woman who, in consequence of her life experiences, is struggling to find her way forward. The story is rendered with less melodrama than in Volver or All About My Mother (1999); this is less flamboyant, a bit more muted and dispassionate. But it is still very much an Almodóvar movie: the women are beautiful, the sets are artful, the production values are high, the construction of the film scene by scene is so finely tuned that three decades of this woman’s life comfortably fit into a ninety-nine minute film. This is one of those rare pictures that is complete unto itself, close to perfect in realizing its themes and telling its story.

Julieta is the second movie I have seen this year featuring different actors playing the protagonists at different stages of their lives. The first, of course, is the excellent Moonlight – in which three actors inhabit the role of a boy becoming a man, at three distinct moments in his young life. Here, relative newcomer Adriana Ugarte plays the younger Julieta, and the much lauded Emma Suarez plays older Julieta. This being an Almodóvar film, you would be correct in assuming that both are beautiful and that each of these ladies can really act. What’s surprising is how seamlessly this works.  Sure, I noticed that two actors were involved, but each unquestionably was the same person – Julieta!

The movie opens with the older Julieta (Suarez) packing up her apartment. She is preparing to move from Madrid to live with her boyfriend, Lorenzo, on the coast of Portugal. On the street, she has a chance meeting with Bea (Michelle Jenner), a young woman she has not seen in years, who was the best friend of Julieta's daughter, Antia, back then. Bea is in a hurry, but says that she recently ran into Antia near Lake Como in northern Italy. She also mentions that Antia has three lovely children. it is apparent to us (although Bea seems unaware) that Julieta knows none of this and desperately longs for more news of her daughter. Later, we learn that Antia abandoned her mother without a word of explanation. That was twelve long years ago, and Julieta has heard nothing from or about her since then. So there’s a mystery.

Soon thereafter, Julieta abruptly informs Lorenzo that she will not be moving to Portugal with him. Respect my decision and don’t ask why, she says.  She commences a letter to Antia (though she has no address). The letter begins, “Dear Antia: I’m going to tell you everything I wasn’t able to tell you. Because you were a child. Because it was too painful for me. Or simply out of shame.”  More mystery.

With this starts a long series of flashbacks telling Julieta's story, from her first meeting with Antia’s father, the fisherman Xoan (Daniel Grao), on a train (a bit like Celine and Jesse, and  reminiscent of multiple Hitchcock train scenes); their passionate romance and the birth of Antia; the deep bonding with her husband’s sculptor friend Ava (Inma Questa); Julieta’s unquellable grief and depression – and maternal inattentiveness - following Xoan’s disappearance at sea and adolescent Antia’s concomitantly growing attachment to young Bea and her family; Antia’s abrupt, unforeseen disappearance with its devastating effects; and on through the aftermath of Julieta’s fateful meeting with Beatriz with which the movie began.

Almodóvar touches on so much in the telling of this story. He portrays women as more interesting and more resilient than men. This is depicted by the arc of Julieta’s story, and graphically represented by one of the key tangible symbols in the movie:  a primitive terracotta sculpture, one of a series molded by Ava, that depicts a little, seated man – small enough for Julieta to hold and caress in her hands – which Ava gives to Julieta.   Commenting on this, Almodóvar has said that these scenes represent the power of women: Woman creates the image of man. “[She] not only gives life but she is stronger in order to fight, administer, suffer and enjoy all that life brings with it. Only fate is stronger than her."

Julieta’s life, and thus this film, is suffused with layers of guilt – her guilt at being unable to protect her mother from slipping into dementia or from her callous husband (Julieta’s father), guilt about  her behavior toward a stranger who subsequently suicided on the train early in the picture, remorse at having quarreled with Xoan shortly before his fatal last voyage,  shame and self-blame for Antia’s disappearance. Her daughter’s abandonment is one of the great mysteries of Julieta’s life and indeed of the film itself.

If all of this sounds terribly depressing to watch, it is not that at all.  Rather, I found it to be a a rich, rewarding, and ultimately life affirming portrait of a woman’s life - a life with its share of heartbreak, but also of passion and grace. The construction of the movie is so fine, it’s even fascinating to think not only about Almodóvar's themes, but about the various ways in which these are manifested and underscored: through color, soundtrack, repetition, imagery, dialogue, and so on.  It’s not often I am motivated to engage in such post-movie analysis, but it’s fun and revealing to do so with Julieta.

All of the actors are strong and believable. Ugarte and Suarez are especially good.  So is Rossy De Palma, who plays Xoan’s sage, mysterious housekeeper Marian. She nearly steals every scene she’s in.

And, like all of Almodóvar's work, Julieta is visually striking. 

This is a movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend. I look forward to seeing it again, and I’d encourage you to do so as well.

 [As a simplifying guide to readers, starting in 2017, I’m providing a grading system - on an A through F scale – to summarize and express my opinions about a film’s relative quality.]

Grade: A

Julieta is being rolled out sequentially in select theaters around the USA. As this is written it is playing in New York, LA, Miami, Pasadena, and San Francisco. On January 13, 2017 more Bay Area and California venues will be added, as well as DC, Scottsdale, Cambridge, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Additional cities will be added weekly thereafter. Keep an eye out.