ThiefHott Too much of everything

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

ma-cortes Pedro Almodover 2oth feature film being an engaging and thought provoking melodrama dealing with a middle age woman , Emma Suarez , living in Madrid with her sweetheart , Dario Grandinetti , about to move towards Lisboa . She , then , decides to stay only in Madrid to take on her existence and the most essential deeds about her missing daughter , Priscila Delgado . Julieta begins to record by writing her sad memories when she was a teen , Adriana Ugarte , and how she meets a fisher, Daniel Grao , and falls for him . Interesting and agreeable drama by Almodovar plenty of passions , love , death and twists. Great performances from Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte. Being based on 3 stories by Alice Munro titled Chance, Soon and Silence from his collection Runaway . Attractive as well as sensational support cast plenty of Almodovar familiar faces such as Dario Grandinetti, Rossi De Palma in her seventh collaboration , along with others as Daniel Grao , Imma cuesta, Natalie Poza, Michelle Jenner, Susi Sánchez , Joaquin Notario , Pilar Castro .Sensitive and enjoyable soundtrack by Oscar Winner Alberto Iglesias , Almodovar regular. Colorful and evocative cinematography by Jean Claude Larrieu and a lot of frames contains the Red color. La motion picture was well directed by Pedro Almodovar in his usual style, being produced by his brother Agustin Almodovar and their production company , El Deseo . This is Almodovar return to women's drama which he has not directed on since Volver . Almodovar is considered to be one of the best fimmakers of the film history . He has got a lot of hits with dramatic films as Talk to her , Volver , The flower of My secret , The sin I live in, Abrazos rotos , Carne Trémula, Tacones Lejanos , Ley Del Deseo , Que he hecho yo para merecer esto , Matador ! , but also has made comedies as Women on the edge of breakdown , Kika , Laberinto de pasiones , I am so excited and Pepi Lucia Bom.

matlabaraque Julieta is definitely not the best, but for sure not the worst of Almodovar either. It's a good story, with very good actors, good characters but the scenes Almodovar put all together are stereotypes of his own cinema and his own world. It's a bit like Tarantino who exaggerates what he does (or did) the best. Is it because he gets older and older ? Is it because he lacks inspiration ? I loved his cinema, I don't want to lash out at him but this film is not enough to resuscitate Almodovar's genius. Almodovar masters the dramatic art, the seriousness of scenes, the desire on screen but he mainly made a postcard of his own, a postcard of his own world. The salad bowl is beautiful, full of fresh vegetables and Spanish specialties, the house on the North coast features an outstanding view over the sea, the Spanish village in the south is authentic and calm, the kitchen's wall paper reminds the eighties but it is mainly "beautifully cheesy". It requires no effort to watch it, you can let you drive by his eternal love towards Madrid, the women, the Spanish country side, sexual desires and you can lie to yourself saying it's agreat one... it may work for some time and you'll have a good moment. The end of the film is just a non-ending story... and we (his fans) will wait for the next one.

gradyharp Fate and mother/daughter relationships Pedro Almodóvar crowns his 30 year career as one of our most creative, controversial and brilliant cinematic artists with this his twentieth film – JULIETA – based on three short stories by Alice Munro as adapted for the screen by Almodóvar. Not only is the story mesmerizing and at times challenging to keep up with the director's ideas, it displays a brilliant cast of Spanish actors in one of the most impressive films of the past year. One of the tricky directorial decisions is to employ two actresses to play the same character – one as the younger Julieta and one as the more mature Julieta. The manner in which Almodóvar transitions these two aspects of the personality of Julieta (as well as the stunning performances by the two actresses – Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte) is just one of the miracles of this film.Briefly, after a casual encounter, a brokenhearted woman decides to confront her life and the most important events about her stranded daughter. But more specifically, Julieta (Emma Suárez) is a middle-aged woman living in Madrid with her boyfriend Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti). They plan to move to Portugal when Julieta encounters Bea (Michelle Jenner), former best friend of her daughter Antia (Priscilla Delgado then Blanca Parés), who reveals that Antia is living in Switzerland and is married and with three children. With the heart broken after 12 years of total absence of her daughter, Julieta cancels the journey to Portugal and she moves to her former building, in the hope that Antia someday communicates with her sending a letter. Alone with her thoughts, Julieta starts to write her memories to confront the pain of the events happened when she was a teenager (Adriana Ugarte) and met Xoan (Daniel Grao), a Galician fisherman. Falling in love with him, Julieta divides her time between the family, the job and the education of Antia until a fatal accident changes their lives: Xoan is drowned at sea during a brutal storm. Slowly decaying in a depression, Julieta is helped by Antia and Bea, but one day Antia goes missing suddenly after a vacation with no clues about where to find her, leaving Julieta desperate to understand the reasons of her missing and her search leads to self discovery and acceptance of buried secrets – her own relationship with her mother and the kinship between like mother who happen to be mother/daughter. The uniformly excellent cast includes the Almodóvar constant, Rossy de Palma, whose presence is a meaningful driver to the story. The musical score is by Alberto Iglesas and the lush cinematography is the work of Jean-Claude Larrieu. But the crown belongs to Pedro Almodóvar – another brilliant masterpiece.

Gail Spilsbury One of the best things about seeing the latest Almodóvar movie is being immersed in a world that is not America. The scenery, the characters, the daily life and overall traditions are from the director's Spanish realm. After several decades of his movies, we anticipate what he's going to present us next, for it will be something that holds our attention and makes us laugh or think. Above all, it will be the latest unveiling of an artist's work.Music plays a dominant role in Julieta, composed by Alberto Iglesias, a familiar collaborator of Almodóvar. The tone and atmosphere of the music as the movie opens set the stage for the coming content, and it's dark, almost haunting, and subtly ominous. Its predominant characteristic expresses the dead feeling of depression. It always stays just below the line where life percolates, and over the course of the story at key moments rises just enough to deliver suspense but still remains under that non-living line. Without the music's role in the story arc, the tale's simplicity and the camera's slow study of Julieta's state of mind might have resulted in a dull film, for as Orson Welles once said: "Films should be able to tell you a story quicker than any other medium." But Julieta succeeds in its objective of studying a woman's loss, and loss is not something easily captured in words. The visual portrayal of loss has more power, and Emma Suárez, who plays the middle-aged Julieta, holds us still in our witnessing of her static grief, which is depression. Julieta is loosely based on three short stories by the Canadian Nobel Prize–winner Alice Munro. The stories have been moved to a Spanish milieu and processed through the imagination of Spain's greatest filmmaker. The opening music shares the screen with sensual red folds of fabric that then wrap a contemporary sculpture of a terracotta man with an over-sized pipe for a penis. An important blue envelope is thrown into the trash. We come to understand that Julieta is moving, packing and throwing out, cutting ties to her past. Her boyfriend, an art critic Lorenzo, arrives and their brief conversation tells us they are a happy couple moving to Portugal. In the next scene, Julieta encounters Bea, her daughter Antía's closest childhood friend, and learns that Antía lives in Como. We witness Julieta's stunned and ravaged face as she grasps onto this news of her daughter, and from that moment on, the movie delves into the past and how Julieta lost contact with Antía. She ends her plans to move to Portugal with Lorenzo. She rents an available apartment in the same building where she and Antía once lived on the off chance that Antía will try to reach her after thirteen years. She sits down, opens a large notebook, and begins writing to Antía the story of what happened to them. This narrative becomes the story of the movie, with Adriana Ugarte playing the younger, bombshell Julieta.Colors mark the movie, deep saturated colors that deliver mystery and mood, or flamboyant colors like young Julieta's shock of bleached hair and her bright facial make-up and clothing. We're treated to idyllic seaside views of her lover Xoan's home—he's a hunky Galician fisherman played by Daniel Grao. The terra-cotta figure with pipe penis seems to symbolize him, for the hottest passion imaginable strikes these two characters at the beginning of Julieta's memoir to Antía, and results in Antía's conception and the future of the family. Just the way the music is almost ominous, almost sinister, Xoan's housekeeper Maria (Inma Cuesta) fills us with uneasiness—is she good or bad? Her face when dealing with Julieta is cold and inscrutable, possibly plotting evil, but later with the teenage Antía, she shows her warmth and affection. This kind of suspense in character and music keeps us waiting for something to happen, and though something does, a tragedy, a loss, it's not violent or visually traumatic. It's depression.The movie successfully explores depression caused by tragedy and loss. Perhaps the ambivalence an audience might feel when the movie ends has to do with not really feeling close to Julieta or Antía, despite comprehending their interior worlds through their facial and physical communication. We remain on the objective, viewing side of a situation, our minds involved but not our hearts, as if the work is a study. It's an incongruity in the movie that Xoan's home and Julieta's Madrid apartments are upper middle class in furnishings and possessions. She comes from a teacher's background and Xoan is a fisherman, but their lifestyle, and her outfits, couldn't be more bourgeois. Those furnishings for the characters stand out and remove the viewer from the willing suspension of disbelief. For Almodóvar fans, Julieta will be worth seeing as the latest from an artist's oeuvre, but it won't be as powerful as Bad Education (about Catholic-priest sex abuse) or Talk to Her (about friendship and love), or even, for those who can take it, the macabre thriller The Skin I Live In.