Psychodrama is director at half tempo
Julieta (out of 4) Starring Emma Suarez, Adriana Ugarte, Daniel Grao, Rossy de Palma and Dario Grandinetti. Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 99 minutes. 18A
With his new psychodrama Julieta, Pedro Almodovar pays homage to women and to suspense master Alfred Hitchcock — not at all for the first time but never before with such evident deliberation.
Perhaps it’s the moderating influence of the source material, three stories by Canada’s Nobel laureate Alice Munro, which the master writer/director has woven into one screenplay and relocated to his native Spain.
Or maybe Almodovar is attempting to calm down after I’m So Excited!, his previous film that made such ear- lier amusements as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown seem sedate in comparison.
Whatever the reason, this is Almodovar at half tempo, in everything apart from the production design, where his penchant for bright primary colours remains potent.
Julieta slowly unfolds as a mystery whereby a woman investigates her past to find clues to her current unhappiness. The Julieta of the title, played by Emma Suarez in current middle age and Adriana Ugarte in flashbacks from her 20s, is first glimpsed as she’s about to move to Portugal from Madrid with her romantic partner Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti), a major life change they’ve been planning for a year.
Achance meeting on the street with Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), the childhood best friend of Julieta’s daughter Antia (variously played by Ariadna Matin, Priscilla Delgado and Blanca Pares), brings unexpected word of Antia’s most recent whereabouts and her current family situation. Antia has dropped out of Julieta’s life.
Elaboration will come later, but the news is sufficiently shocking to prompt Julieta to cancel her Portu- gal plans, much to Lorenzo’s dismay, and to move back into the Madrid apartment block where Antia lived with her as a child.
Thus commences the film’s long flashback portion, and most serious Hitchcock adoration, as a punkhaired younger Julieta, played by Ugarte, travels by train across the Spanish countryside. The journey seems ominous, given the Vertigo-inflected score of Alberto Iglesias.
She’s headed for a new job, but fate has other plans. She’ll fall into the embrace and seaside home of Xoan (Daniel Grao) a fisherman with whom she’ll produce her daughter Antia. And since Almodovar loves a crowd, Julieta will do this while being judged by Xoan’s housekeeper (Rossy de Palma), encouraged by his former lover (Inma Cuesta) and vexed by a father (Joaquin Notario) whom she doesn’t understand.
Themes of loss, regret and alienation emerge and are respectfully considered, with fine acting but not always the conviction one would expect from both Almodovar and his characters. The master sleeps, perhaps to dream of a more involving movie to come.