★ 8 / 10
**Summary: 8/10: a devastating, exquisitely controlled study of
badelf
**Summary: 8/10: a devastating, exquisitely controlled study of how grief can sever even the deepest bonds, anchored by two extraordinary performances and…
**Summary: 8/10: a devastating, exquisitely controlled study of how grief can sever even the deepest bonds, anchored by two extraordinary performances and Almodóvar's rare gift for making every element of a film disappear into the whole.**
Grief has a way of finding the fault line already running through a relationship and splitting it wide open, and Pedro Almodóvar's *Julieta* is one of the most exact studies of that process in narrative film. This isn't grief as a particular wound; it's rather a slow, silent estrangement between a mother and a daughter, each one unable to reach the other precisely because each is drowning in the same loss from a different angle.
What the film understands, and what I suspect younger viewers may not yet be equipped to comprehend, is that traumatic grief doesn't always draw people together. Sometimes it corrodes the very bond it should be strengthening. Antía, we come to learn, cannot fully appreciate what her mother went through, or what their relationship meant, until much later in her own life. That's not a flaw in the character; it's the film's whole insight about grief and maturity, that some kinds of understanding are simply unavailable to us until we've lived long enough to need them.
I want to mention a small discovery, since it may be my first time catching a genuine Easter egg in an Almodóvar film. While Julieta is packing, the camera dips down to a box holding a record, its cover clearly visible: an album by Ryuichi Sakamoto, the celebrated Japanese composer, whose music Julieta is listening to in that moment. The same album reappears later when she unpacks. It's a lovely small touch precisely because it's out of house style; Almodóvar has scored nearly every film of his career with Alberto Iglesias and only one with Sakamoto, so a needle-drop credit to him stands out as a deliberate, specific choice. It says something about the care Almodóvar puts into even the objects passing through frame for two seconds, and it rewards anyone paying close enough attention to notice.
The direction is, as ever with this director, extraordinary. Almodóvar's signature lush color palettes are present but pulled inward here, more subdued, darker, weighted toward reds, blues, and deep olives, a palette that mourns rather than celebrates, and it suits this film's interior sadness perfectly. What continues to astonish me about his filmmaking is the total harmony he achieves between every element, color, camera, performance, script, music. Nothing dominates. Nothing calls attention to itself as the "best part." It functions like a magic trick where you can watch it happen twice and still not locate the seam.
The performances anchor all of it. Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte play Julieta at two different ages, and both are extraordinary in ways that never feel like acting, only like living. The handoff between them, the way the same woman's grief looks entirely different at twenty years' distance, is one of the film's quietest triumphs, and neither actress overplays a single moment of it.
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★ 8 / 10
A dramatic movie that focuses on family estrangements
Judith K
A dramatic movie that focuses on family estrangements over two generation: Julieta from her father followed by her daughter from her. I found the story very…
A dramatic movie that focuses on family estrangements over two generation: Julieta from her father followed by her daughter from her. I found the story very moving. While many reviewers' praise is somewhat muted, I think this is a very good movie by Almodovar and well worth watching. The acting, the score, and the brightly colorful costumes and sets are well worth seeing.
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★ 6 / 10
Julieta contains a story that didn’t develop emotionally
Ben D
Julieta contains a story that didn’t develop emotionally in any conceivable way. While many of the characters are lovely to look at, the lack of a connection…
Julieta contains a story that didn’t develop emotionally in any conceivable way. While many of the characters are lovely to look at, the lack of a connection made me not really care what happened to them. Xoan (Daniel Grao) has intermittent dalliances with a mutual friend, Ava (Inma Cuesta), the news of which we learn right before he dies removing the gravitas from the moment. Julieta comes in two forms: young (20s, Adriana Ugarte) and older (40s(?) Emma Suárez). When we first meet the younger Julieta, she has an abysmal hairstyle that is so distracting it made me want to fast-forward to more recent memories — we see all of younger Julieta through flashbacks. It’s not a disjointed timeline, but it’s not enjoyable either. Julieta is dejected from her estranged relationship with her daughter, Antia (Sara Jiménez/Priscilla Delgado/Blanca Parés). It’s so unbelievably cruel of Antia to ignore her mother in this capacity, especially since her mother was the victim of the affair, not the perpetrator, that you just want Julieta to not bother with the deadbeat. However, I understand this is much easier said than done, and can see why Julieta would pause her own happiness and a new start in Portugal to remain in Madrid with the hopes of finally reconnecting with her daughter. Fine. But the payoff never comes despite the happy ending. I plan to view all of Almodóvar’s movies in my life, as he is the director for my favorite country, but despite the beauty of its characters and setting — that house on the water up in Galicia truly is something from my Zillow-scouring dreams — Julieta is not a movie I could recommend unless you just need to see Emma Suárez on-screen, which would be understandable
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· 2.5K ratings
7.1/10
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