Julieta (15)

four stars

Dir: Pedro Almodóvar

With: Adriana Ugarte, Emma Suarez, Darío Grandinetti

Runtime: 99 minutes

AS Pedro Almodóvar’s drama opens the screen is awash with his beloved red, a colour so often associated in his films with passion and gaiety. Here, indeed, is another Almodovar picture which is all heart. Yet this offering is a softer, more rounded, less frenetic picture than we have grown used to seeing from the Spanish director. Far from being a tame affair, it is his most affecting and memorable film in years.

The first Julieta we meet is played by Emma Suarez. It is modern day Madrid and our heroine is packing up her flat, ready to start a new life with her lover, Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti), in Portugal. Both fiftysomethings, both sleek, fashionable creatures, they look like the kind of folk for whom all of life’s pieces have fallen delightfully into place. Just a quick last minute shopping trip and she will be all set to go, upwards and onwards to the next stage of her life.

While out shopping Julieta meets a familiar face, a friend of her daughter Antia’s from long ago. The friend has news of Antia, but far from seeming overjoyed, Julieta looks stunned. Later, back home, we see her going through her things and finding an envelope. Inside is a photograph, torn into strips. As she assembles them we see the image is of Julieta many years ago with a young woman. Is this Antia? Why has the photo been shredded? Questions, questions, everywhere. There is one thing Julieta, and we, know for certain: the move to Portugal, the new life, is off.

As Julieta does with the photograph, Almodovar proceeds to put the pieces of the tale together. We rattle backwards through the years to a young Julieta (Adriana Ugarte), on a train on her way to a new job as a classics teacher. The mood is positively Highsmithian as she sits opposite a middle-aged stranger who is trying to engage her in conversation. Feeling uneasy, Julieta moves to the buffet car where she meets the handsome Xoan (Daniel Grao). It is night, there is snow outside, and through the window they see the heart-stoppingly beautiful sight of a stag running alongside the train. The journey is to prove memorable in other ways, each of them signalling things about Julieta and how her life will unfold.

Almodovar (Volver, Talk to Her, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) moves swiftly and confidently back and forth through the years, telling the story of Julieta. It is not an especially startling or inventive tale. Later, thinking about the story, there were parts which required much more explanation than Almodovar supplies. Yet having slowly drawn us into his embrace, he does not give an inch. This is a train from which one does not want to disembark any time soon. We want to know what happened to the young Julieta to make her the woman she is today.

As ever, Almodovar, basing his screenplay on short stories by Alice Munro, is a pitch perfect portrayer of women in all their emotional complexity. As usual, he is blessed by performers of the calibre of Ugarte and Suarez, both of whom rise to and conquer the challenge of playing emotionally charged material in subtle, believable ways.

This being Almodovar there is melodrama, but it is a mere dusting compared to earlier films. On the whole, he is a model of restraint (for Almodovar anyway). In consequence, when we finally discover what ails Julieta the answers are all the more devastating and persuasive for having been delivered in such a gentle fashion. Here is a story of love and loss, of moments and conversations that change lives, yet one only realises this afterwards.

After the galloping silliness of 2013’s I’m So Excited, this is a more sombre, but infinitely more satisfying Almodovar. In Julieta he offers that increasingly rare cinema experience - a film that excites the senses, calms the heart, and stays with you for a long time afterwards. One to savour.