‘The first reaction by Alberto Iglesias, my musician for twenty years, when he saw the edited film was that it didn’t need music. He liked it bare, just as it had been born in the editing room’, says director Almodovar, of his new film JULIETA.
Thankfully, the film maker insisted that it did need music, at least little transitions to accentuate the changes of era or the character’s repetitions. Something delicate and light like Clint Eastwood’s compositions in some of his best films, like Million Dollar Baby.
The end result is a jazz infused score reminiscent of Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, a perfect accompaniment to this bold melodrama fashioned from three short stories by Alice Munro.
Two different actresses play the titular character, Julieta, Adriana Ugarte from twenty five to forty, and Emma Suárez from forty onward. They are both beautiful and believable performances essaying one woman’s journey from romantic optimism to the minutiae grit of guilt that cruelly cultures into a pearl of reproach.
A chance encounter with a stranger on a train links the twin carriages of birth and death for the young Julieta, and the ensuing story, told in flashback and triggered by yet another chance encounter, follows the curious shuntings and sidetracks her life experiences.
As with much of Almodovar’s work, mother daughter relationships are central to Julieta’s trajectory, examining both Julieta’s relationship with her mother and the quite different experience with her daughter.
Cinematographer Jean-Claud Larrieau supplies the perfect palette for the picture with deep reds, vibrant yellows and earthy terracotta at the fore.
For all the jealousies, estrangements, and abrupt changes of heart, JULIETA rises from the dull flat road of reproach to soar into the frontier of rapprochement.
Almodovar maintains that “almost all my films gain the second time they’re seen. JULIETA will certainly be enjoyed more when you’ve already seen it and know the story. I’d like to persuade my producers and distributors to offer a free second viewing to people who have already seen the film. You don’t know everything about people or enjoy their company when you meet them for the first time. The same thing happens with JULIETA.” Here, Here!