[CRITICAL] JULIETA – Penelopethemovie

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With JULIETA, adapted from three new to the canadian writer Alice Munro, Pedro Almodóvar book one of his works the most successful. Able to references are many but subtle, to come back on his own filmography, and at the same time strive towards a certain novelty. It is in this way that the Spanish director takes us sometimes a thriller, sometimes a melodrama, before delivering his true form, a deep family drama between a mother and her daughter.

The background story of JULIETA is rather simple. Julieta (touching Emma Suárez), the fifties, is preparing to leave Madrid with his companion. When she meets a young woman on the street who speaks to him of Antía, her daughter she has not seen in years, her past resurfaces suddenly surface. Such a ” junkie “, as she defines herself, here she is in the memories of her daughter, clouded by its absence. By moving to an adjoining room of the old apartment, we see already something of 2046 by Wong Kar-wai , while Julieta decides to write her daughter the story of his life, we delivering its secrets which have brought him so far.

We are 20 years earlier. Julieta is a young (played this time by the beautiful Adriana Ugarte), short hair, blonde and firecrackers, voluntarily marked by the 1980s – beginning ofAlmodóvar in the cinema. Producer climate strange in a night train quite empty in terms of humans, but rich in memories. He reminds us here (and the movie) some of the works ofAlfred Hitchcock, such as The Stranger of the North Express , or Death to the kits of course, but also to other level, Rebecca or No spring for Marnie. Because the occurrence of a tragedy, tragic, a sense of guilt for Julieta and then for a hug comforting with Xoan, met in the same train. The birth of a love that passes by a sex scene is admirable, where the body and their reflection on a window mix. Almodóvar takes the voyeurism – in the continuity of the references, there is of course the style of Brian De Palma – plays and frustration to the viewer who tries, both good and bad, to witness as clearly as possible to these antics powerful.

With mastery and maturity, Almodóvar achieves a fascinating film about the loss Click To Tweet

This is the first part of the movie that we imagine will continue around a relationship between Julieta and Xoan. But as usual with Almodóvar , this is not so simple. And it will have to wait still before we can understand the real subject he is about to treat ; guilt and its consequences. Dating back to watermark the life of this woman of which we have knowledge of the future, Almodóvar insists on details, which may seem harmless in the moment, but the prelude to future tragedies. The years pass, Julieta changes – physically more mature, his hair cut, longer and longer, and suddenly, the loss of this love, and whose circumstances bring back to its own fault up to leave it in a state of listless. Almodóvar moves slowly and simply with its characters. It forms a mother / daughter relationship, first touching, then draw a dependency so fully described by Julieta.

From there, we will move the guilt, up to hit all of the protagonists. Under the background of Greek tragedy, Almodóvar shows the fleeting nature of life and the fragility of beings, swept away by the disease for some, marked by time (wonderful time during the change of its main actress) or by external elements for other. As victims of a curse as a result of their sins, all will be punished according to Antía. The latter, finding the faith during a dark retreat psychological led the filmmaker on a slippery ground (evocation possible of indoctrination, jihadist) as it manages to appropriate and to include perfectly into his narrative. In the manner of Women on the edge of hysterics , which used a protagonist of terrorism, a year after the car bombing of 1987 in Zaragoza. Almodóvar incorporates the updates to his work, in all naturalness – in the same way as homosexuality in his cinema, finding a form of timelessness.

The director scattered throughout the film a series of clues that will find resonance in some in its characters, recalling (if necessary) all his talent. As this passage where Julieta’s visit to her sick mother. Going to join her in her bed, looking at him with the eyes of a child. “Mom ” loosely-she says in a voice full of tenderness and love before him, showing his own child ; the mother and daughter proclivities of the latter, compiled in a plan that is humanly beautiful. This simplicity of things, Almodóvar draws a strong emotion, as honest and true, as was already the case with Volver. Without the humor and sometimes zany as he was in the habit to include in situations that, a priori, do not lend themselves (La Piel Habito That, among other things), but with the control and the maturity of his major works (All about my mother, Talk to her…), Almodóvar realizes there’s a fascinating film about the loss. This is in spite of his final that could be considered too fast. Because on the contrary, the director doesn’t forget to use the out-of-field in its history, announced from the beginning by the absence of the daughter, Julieta. Until the end he will appeal to the imagination of his audience. Until the end he will be able to create a bond with him, to include it and bring it to work, both on its emotions and those of the protagonists, than on his vision of the links between the beings.

Stone Siclier

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