Juli­eta

If movies had cheeks, this one would be imprint­ed with a ver­i­ta­ble roadmap of wind­ing, mas­cara-caked tear stains. Pedro Almodóvar’s Juli­eta is a hot red swoon. Its lips pursed, its face unread­able until the dev­as­tat­ing yet rev­e­la­to­ry clos­ing frames, it soft­ly veers between a hand-select­ed inven­to­ry of themes and emo­tions, han­dling each with the utmost of care and cau­tion. The film’s orig­i­nal title was Silen­cio (Silence), and it’s per­haps a more evoca­tive encap­su­la­tion of its core con­ceit: of peo­ple tak­ing life-alter­ing actions with­out first explain­ing and ratio­nal­is­ing them to others.

Juli­eta (Emma Suárez) is a bro­ken woman, all set to decamp from Madrid to Por­tu­gal with her art his­to­ri­an boyfriend in an attempt to white­wash over the mem­o­ry of… some­thing. A chance encounter on a street cor­ner with an old friend of her daughter’s, Antía, acts as the cat­a­lyst for a psy­cho­log­i­cal deep-clean. She pens a lengthy note which is visu­alised in flash­back, detail­ing the curi­ous sto­ry of Antía’s con­cep­tion and then per­ti­nent episodes up to the present day. The film is based on three short sto­ries by Cana­di­an author Alice Munro, but Almodóvar has worked his mag­ic to make this sto­ry feel at once sweep­ing and entire­ly cohesive.

2006’s Volver was the director’s last, flat-out great film, and this one is a wel­come return to those exhil­a­rat­ing, neo-melo­dra­ma peaks. It’s an inti­mate tale, at points even verg­ing on the mut­ed, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able for a film­mak­er who, in the past, has cher­ished the oppor­tu­ni­ty of whisk­ing up bursts of unbri­dled pas­sion. Yet this is a com­plete work, whose many plea­sures only become ful­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble when the final cred­its begin to roll. It’s only at this cli­mac­tic con­ver­gence point that you can see just how many plates the direc­tor was spin­ning all along.

The only clue that Almodóvar gives to the fact that some­thing big­ger lies ahead is the way the film is shot and stylised. Char­ac­ters dress in loud gar­ments which often run counter to their emo­tion­al state. They intone dia­logue while perched in front of brash art­works that hang sym­bol­i­cal­ly on apart­ment walls. Alber­to Igle­sias’ cool jazz-inflect­ed score is intri­cate and mean­der­ing, slid­ing sur­rep­ti­tious­ly between actions and words to lend the film the air of a trag­ic operetta. The form height­ens and enhances the nar­ra­tive rather than direct­ly explain­ing what we should be feeling.

Moth­ers, daugh­ters, ghosts, dis­ease, estrange­ment, artists, comas, Rossy de Pal­ma… On paper, it could only be more Almodóvar if it were filmed on scar­let satin. And yet with Juli­eta the direc­tor seems refreshed, in a mode of qui­et con­tem­pla­tion and hap­py to be back toil­ing with human sen­si­tiv­i­ty at near-impo­lite close quar­ters. At its sim­plest, it’s a film about how we deal with the unread­abil­i­ty of oth­ers, who them­selves can under­go abrupt changes of heart. Instinct is the ene­my of psy­cho­log­i­cal well­be­ing, and Juli­eta learns this the hard way. If we have the good for­tune know that death is approach­ing, we can take the chance to make sure our books are all in order.