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Home , Adriana Ugarte, Alberto Iglesias, Daniel Grao, Dear Life (book), El Cor de la Ciutat, Feroz Awards

November 27, 2017 (XXXV:14) Pedro Almodóvar JULIETA (2016), 99 min.

(The online version of this handout has color images and hot urls.)

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar Written by Pedro Almodóvar (screenplay) (based on the short stories "Destino", "Pronto" and "Silencio") Produced by Agustín Almodóvar, Diego Pajuelo, Bárbara Peiró ... associate producer Music Cinematography Jean-Claude Larrieu Film Editing José Salcedo Art Direction Carlos Bodelón

Cast Emma Suárez…Julieta …Julieta Joven it. Instead, Almodóvar bought a Super 8 camera and began to Daniel Grao…Xoan shoot short films on his own. “I had no budget, no money,” he …Ava says. “The important thing was to make movies.” He wrote out Darío Grandinetti…Lorenzo complete scripts, even though his camera couldn’t record sound, Michelle Jenner…Beatriz and changed the characters depending on which of his friends Pilar Castro…Claudia showed up for a shoot. He avoided filming where he might bump …Juana into the authorities, and so he made several Biblical epics in the Susi Sánchez...Sara countryside, giving them, he says, “a bucolic and abstract air, the Joaquín Notario…Samuel opposite of Cecil B. De Mille’s.” Since he had no money to buy Priscilla Delgado…Antía (Adolescente) lights, many of the scenes in his Super 8 movies were filmed on Blanca Parés…Antía (18 años) rooftops, in parks, and by windows. “Fortunately, is a …Marian place with a lot of natural light.” The director’s first Super 8 movies are too damaged to be shown today. They exist only in Pedro Almodóvar (b. Pedro Almodóvar Caballero, September his retelling. He projected them for friends in bars, discos, and art 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Ciudad Real, Castilla-La galleries. He improvised dialogue, sometimes commenting on the Mancha, Spain) grew up mostly in the company of women. His acting, while Agustín, who had followed him to , father was a mule driver who led a team of twenty animals across provided a soundtrack with recorded music. Almodóvar worked the Sierra Morena to deliver wine to Jaén, in Andalucía. As a hard on his screenplays, giving them plenty of twists (he’s often young boy, Almodóvar was raised by women and saw them as a referred to himself as a ‘frustrated novelist’). His first film, Pepi, communal force. They were Spain’s secret power. “It was Luci, Bom, was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival in because of women that Spain survived the postwar period,” he 1980. Some critics savaged the low production values, but others says. Also at this time, he and his younger brother Agustín, argued that this attested to the film’s urgency and cultural became regular moviegoers. By then, Almodóvar had realized authenticity. Who cared if the director hadn’t miked the actors that he wanted not just to see movies but to make them, too. At properly? El Periódico perceptively praised Almodóvar as “a the age of seventeen he told his parents that he was moving to stubbornly passionate defender of substandard movies.” The film Madrid to pursue a career in film. His father, he recalls, became a staple of late-night Madrid—a “Rocky Horror Picture “threatened to turn me in to the National Guard.” Almodóvar Show” for the Spanish—and highly profitable. They featured intended to enroll in film school, but the city had only one, and transvestites, transgender people, bondage, rape, and lots of drug Franco, viewing it as a center of Communism, had all but closed use and sex. His stories blurred the lines between gay and Almodóvar—JULIETA—2

straight, coerced and consensual, comedy and melodrama, the boyfriend’s name?” “That’s the first thing they ask you in the funny and the repulsive, high and low art. It was all delivered United States!” he says. “That and your box-office numbers.” He with a puzzling cheerfulness that made the movies far more eventually got used to Americans describing him as “openly transgressive than if their tone had been serious. Spain had just gay,” and came to realize why many Americans found it emerged from decades of dictatorship and repression, and necessary to counter homophobia by coming out. “In Spain, in Almodóvar’s films suggested that the country had leaped from that era, you didn’t need to say anything,” he noted. “People just Opus Dei to the Mudd Club in a single bound. Critics could not knew it. I’d never had to make any confession.” In 1989, the film decide whether Almodóvar was the most trivial filmmaker in executive Michael Barker arranged a meeting between history or the inventor of an important new strain of Almodóvar and his idol Billy Wilder. They had lunch, and at the postmodernism. Spanish producers began courting Almodóvar, end of it Wilder told him that he had one piece of advice: “Don’t but he fought them over creative control. In 1985, the brothers come to Hollywood, no matter what.” At that moment, founded their own film company , in part to protect Almodóvar says, he saw in Wilder’s eyes “memories of Almodóvar from such creative battles. Agustín ran the business compromises, failures, and misunderstandings.” Though he has side. By profession, he was a chemistry teacher, but his flirted with the idea of making a film in Hollywood, even going relationship with Pedro was the crucial thing in his life. Agustín as far as to initially ask Meryl Streep to play Juilet in tonight’s has said that his sole purpose at El Deseo is to help “Pedro make film. Yet, he always returns home in the end. The director has the movie he wants.” He has also played bit parts in most of his held steadfast to Wilder’s advice and one might argue his films brother’s films. Creating his own production company allowed are better for it. He has written and directed 33 films some of Pedro an unusual luxury: he could often shoot a movie from first which are I'm So Excited! (2013), (2011), page to last, rather than in the least expensive order. Almodóvar Broken (2009), Embraces (2009), The Cannibalistic Councillor felt that a chronological approach yielded more persuasive (2009, Short), (2006), Bad Education (2004), performances. “I owe Agustín the independence and liberty that I (2002), (1999), Live Flesh (1997), The enjoy as a director,” he says. “It’s completely without precedent. Flower of My Secret (1995), Kika (1993), High Heels (1991), Tie Not even Scorsese himself has been able to do that.” Women on Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), Women on the Verge of a Nervous the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Almodóvar’s eighth feature Breakdown (1988), (1987), Matador (1986), and his second under El Deseo, was released in 1988. The movie Tráiler para ‘amantes de lo prohibido’ (1986, TV Short), What began with a script based on Jean Cocteau’s play The Human Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984), Dark Habits (1983), Voice, in which a woman is heard on the phone speaking to an (1982), Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls unseen lover who is breaking up with her. Like Mom (1980), Folle... folle... fólleme Tim! (1978), Salomé Almodóvar provoked major outcries over his next (1978, Short), Sexo va, sexo viene (1977, Short), Muerte en la feature Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), with its plot of an carretera (1976, Short), Sea caritativo (1976, Short), Tráiler de actress being held captive by and falling for a mentally unhinged 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' (1976, Short), Blancor (1975, man, and the MPAA also giving the film an X rating for its sex Short), El sueño, o la Estrella (1975, Short), Homenaje (1975, scenes. The director followed up with High Heels (1991) and Short), La caída de Sódoma (1975, Short), Dos putas (1974), o Kika (1993), which was controversial as well over its treatment historia de amor que termina en boda (1974, Short), and Film of women. Live Flesh was released in 1998 and featured politico (1974, Short). He also produced 13 films and had small Penelope Cruz in her first film with the director, while acting parts in 11: Bad Education (2004), Law of Desire (1987), Almodóvar's next work, All About My Mother (1999), featured Matador (1986), What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984), Cruz again along with actress portraying a woman Dark Habits (1983), Labyrinth of Passion (1982), Pepi, Luci, who has lost her son and seeks out his father, who is a Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980), Rapture (1980), Times of transvestite. The acclaimed, riveting work saw Almodóvar win the Constitution (1979), and ¿Qué hace una chica como tú en un an Academy Award for best foreign language film, with an sitio como éste? (1978) emotional Banderas and Cruz presenting him with the award. Almodóvar received another Oscar, this time for screenwriting, with 2002’s Talk to Her. The filmmake’'s next work, the noir-ish Bad Education (2004), starring Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez, told the story of two boys who attended a Catholic boarding school together is said to be the director’s most autobiographical. In more recent years, Almodóvar has broadened his subject matter and his tone. A new one comes out every couple of years with no two alike. His aesthetic has become harder and harder to pin down. Over the years so of his youthful transgressive films have given way to a more reflective tone. This can be seen in Volver (2006) which earned Cruz her first Oscar nomination as well as (2009). Often described—especially in his early years—by American critics as a ‘gay director’, Almodóvar has often bristled at this title. In an interview with the New Yoker, he Alice Munro (b. July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, Canada) is recalls, with frustration, a journalist asking him, “What’s your a critically acclaimed Canadian short-story writer who won the Almodóvar—JULIETA—3

Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize in for Volver and the World Soundtrack Award for Soundtrack Literature in 2013. She attended the University of Western Composer of the Year and Best Original Soundtrack of the Year Ontario, where she studied journalism and English, but left (Flanders International Film Festival, Ghent) as well as his school after only two years when she married first husband nominations for both an Academy Award and BAFTA for The James Munro. The couple then moved to Victoria, Vancouver, Constant Gardener. He won the 2008 Satellite Award for Best British Columbia, where they opened a bookstore. During this Original Soundtrack for , and received a second time, Munro began publishing her work in various magazines Academy Award nomination. He has also been awarded nine publishing her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Goyas and numerous other European accolades. Some of his Shades, was published in 1968. The collection garnered Munro other film scores are I'm So Excited! (2013), Tinker Tailor early success in her native country including her first Governor Soldier Spy (2011), The Monk (2011), The Skin I Live In (2011), General's Award for fiction. Three years later, she published Even the Rain (2010), Live Flesh (1997), The Flower of My . Primarily known for her short stories Secret (1995), Outrage (1993), Autumn Rain (1989), about life in Ontario, Munro has published several collections Blues (1986), Luces de bohemia (1985), La muerte de Mikel over the past several decades, including Who Do You Think You (1984), and La conquista de Albania (1984). Are? (1978), (1982), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), which was later adapted into a film, , directed by Sarah Polley in 2006. In 2005, TIME magazine named Munro a TIME 100 Honoree with the magazine stating, “Alice Munro is 73 now, and she deserves the Nobel Prize.” In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International Prize, honoring her lifetime body of work. That same year, she published the short-story collection . Munro would go on to publish 13 short-story collections by her 80th birthday. Most recently, in 2012, she published —her final story collection, according to the writer, who announced that she was retiring from writing in June 2013. In October 2013, bearing out TIME’s proclamation, at the age of 82, Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro is the first Canadian woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and the first Canadian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature since Saul Bellow, who won the honor in 1976. The author later stated, “I would really hope that Emma Suárez (b. June 25, 1964 in Madrid, Spain) starred in her this would make people see the as an important art, first film when she was 15 and from then on shared her time not just something that you played around with until you'd got a between studying dramatic art and performing in plays, films and novel written.” TV productions. However, it was not until the 1990s that she began to transition to film with appearances in Julio Medem’s Alberto Iglesias (b. Alberto Iglesias Fernández-Berridi, 1955 in films (1992), La Ardilla Roja/ (1993) Donostia-San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, País Vasco, Spain) is and Tierra/ Earth (1998); Juan Estelrich Jr.’s La Vía Láctea/The Spain’s most acclaimed living composer. Iglesias received early Mikey Life (1993) and Pintadas (1997); and especially Pilar musical training in piano, guitar, composition and counterpoint, Miró’s El perro del hortelano/ The Dog in the Manger (1996) as well as electronic music studies. His entry into film and Tu nombre envenena mis sueños/ Your Name Poisons My composition began in 1980 and he has enjoyed a long, fruitful Dreams (1996). For her role in La Ardilla Roja she won the Sant partnership with Almodóvar, producing such films as Broken Jordi Award as well as the Cartelera Turia Award and the Embraces (2009), Volver (2006), Bad Education (2004), Take Spanish Actors Union Prize, all for best female actress, and in My Eyes (2003), Talk to Her (2002), and About My Mother 1997 she was bestowed the Goya Award for best Female (1999).Further collaborations with film directors include Julio Interpretation for her part in El Perro del Hortelano. In an Médem’s films Vacas (1992), La Ardilla Roja/ The Red Squirrel interview with The Film Stage on the making of Julieta, the (1993) and Tierra/ Earth (1998), Los amantes del Círculo Polar/ actress discussed Almodóvar’s decision to keep the two actresses Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998), (2001) and playing Julia apart: “Pedro wanted to work with us Iciar Bollain / (2003), as well Bigas Luna’s film independently. For one, the movie is supposed to be an homage La camarera del Titanic/ The Chambermaid on the Titanic to Luis Buñuel, specifically to That Obscure Object of Desire (1997). Additionally, Iglesias has written for leading Hollywood (1977), in which Ángela Molina and Carole Bouquet also play directors such as ’s Comandante (2003), John the same character at different stages in life.The shoot took 12 Malkovich’s The Dancer Upstairs (2002), ’ weeks—we shot it chronologically. The first six weeks of The Constant Gardener (2005) and Marc Foster’s The Kite shooting was done with Adriana Ugarte, while I did the next six Runner (2007). Recent scores include the two films of Steven weeks. Through it all, Adriana and I only met on one day. It was Soderbergh’s biopic about Ernesto Guevara’s life, Che: Part One for the scene on the train. At that point Julieta’s voice appears (2008) and Che: Part Two (2008). The composer was awarded [off-screen], so they had to measure it to make sure the voice the European Film Award for Best Original Soundtrack in 2006 corresponds to the footage shot. But that was the only time we Almodóvar—JULIETA—4

met together.” She went on to describe working with the director: extremely nervous but I went and fell in love with him pretty “Working with Pedro can be difficult because he’s someone much the moment we saw each other.” Her hair color is central who’s very demanding. He’s not easily satisfied. Which is good, to her part in the film and the actress had this to say about the because it means you can trust the fact that he’s going to require change: “I am not blonde to begin with. I had very dark, almost more and more of you until he finds what he wants. Even then he black hair. It took a long, delicate process to get my hair that sometimes keeps asking for more, because he’s trying to see blonde. For Pedro it’s critical to find this perfect blonde color, what else he can get from you. I asked him for references and and I agree. One might say that’s such a superficial aspect of the read books like The Year of Magical Thinking, Other Lives but character, but your hair also talks and says things about you, just Mine, Alice Munro’s stories themselves. I’ve also watched like your lips, your hands, your skin. Your body is always movies like The Hours (2002), Louis Malle’s Elevator to the talking. To understand the importance of this physical form of Gallows (1958), Rossellini’s films. I’ve studied the works of expression has been a huge discovery for me.” Her other acting painters as well, and the by Alberto Iglesias also credits include El sistema solar (2017), Tad the Lost Explorer helped a lot. I did all that in an attempt to dig deeper into the and the Secret of King Midas (2017), Palm Trees in the Snow world of anxiety and emptiness that Julieta lives in.” (2015), Habitaciones cerradas (2015, TV Mini-Series), The Time in Between (2013-2014, TV Series), Niños robados (2013, TV Mini-Series), People in Places (2013), Combustion (2013), Dark Impulse (2011), Lo contrario al amor (2011), Hospital Central (2002-2011, TV Series), La señora (2008-2010, TV Series), 3some (2009), The Hanged Man (2008), My Prison Yard (2008), Gente de mala calidad (2008), Cabeza de perro (2006), El comisario (2006, TV Series), Mesa para cinco (2006, TV Series), El pantano (2003, TV Series) and Policías, en el corazón de la calle (2002, TV Series).

Daniel Grao (b. February 17, 1976 in , , , Spain) came to acting later in life. His biography on his website lists only a series of childhood memories including “I remember being a serious child” and his first acting teacher, “I remember my school of interpretation Nancy Tuñón. It was my home. There the mud of my youth was transformed into gold. Acting saved my life.” Mostly known for his TV work, next year Adriana Ugarte (b. January 17, 1985 in Madrid, Madrid, Spain) the actor will find himself on the big screen in two projects knew at the age of 5 that she wanted to be an actress. She credits currently in post-production: El árbol de la sangre and Animales her parents, who both work in law, with her early love of film. sin collar as well as two TV shows, Giants and La catedral del Says the actress, “They have always been very interested in mar. Some of the highlights of his 59 acting credits are Toc Toc culture and especially in cinema. Starting at a very young age, (2017), La sonata del silencio (2016, TV Series), The Cliff they [would] taken me and my brother to cinemas both in and out (2016), Palm Trees in the Snow (2015), Prim, el asesinato de la of the country.” As a shy child, the actress says she found it more calle del Turco (2014, TV Movie), Hermanos (2014, TV Series), comfortable to inhabit other people’s lives. Known mostly for The Mule (2013), Luna, el misterio de Calenda (2013, TV her TV work, an interviewer asked her about how she came to be Series), The End (2012), Águila Roja (2012, TV Series), Ángel o cast in Julieta. “It was the usual casting process. The only demonio (2011, TV Series), Los misterios de Laura (2011, TV difference was that the casting directors wouldn’t tell me who the Series) Julia’s Eyes (2010), Acusados (2009, TV Series), After director was. They asked me to prepare a text and said it’s for a (2009), Love in Motion (2008), Plan América (2008, TV Series), film by one of the most important directors of the country. Of Sin tetas no hay paraíso (2008, TV Series), Love in Difficult course I went to the first audition with some possible names in Times (2007, TV Series), Quart (2007, TV Series), El comisario my mind but I honestly didn’t know for sure. Considering Pedro (2002-2007, TV Series), Hospital Central (2002-2007, TV is known for working with the same group of actors again and Series), Amistades peligrosas (2006, TV Series), A ras de suelo again, I didn’t think it would be him. After the first audition, the (2005), Reprimidos (2004), Di que sí (2004), The Weakness of casting directors got back to me to say the director liked what he the Bolshevik (2003), Majoria absoluta (2003, TV Series), Jugar saw and asked me to do the same text again, but in a different a matar (2003, TV Movie), Volverás (2002), Plats bruts (2002, way. Which I did at my second audition, still not knowing who I TV Series), L’auberge espagnole (2002), White Smoke (2002) was doing it for. This secrecy actually excited me. After the and (2001, TV Series). second audition, they told me the director was satisfied with my work and that his name was Pedro Almodóvar. I was very Inma Cuesta (b. June 25, 1980 in València, València, Comunitat grateful that I hadn’t known about it until then! After that I went Valenciana, Spain) spent her childhood in Arquillos, Jaén and in for a third audition, doing again the same material, but in yet moved to Córdoba to study at the Escuela Superior de Arte another way. It’s how Pedro normally works by the way. He can Dramático at the age of 18. After graduating, she completed her shoot the same scene with the same lines in 20 different ways. education in , finally moving in 2005 to Madrid, where After that they sent me to meet Pedro at his house. I was she continued to train in musical theatre. She landed her first big Almodóvar—JULIETA—5

opening with Nacho Cano as star of the musical Hoy no me Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. In the three puedo levantar. Shortly afterwards she participated in several decades since, de Palma has appeared in five more of television series including Amar en tiempos revueltos and Plan Almodóvar’s films, taking on a variety of roles from feisty drug América, both by Spanish Television. In 2009 she was given the dealer to lesbian maid to “crab-faced” sister while tonight’s part of Margarita Hernando in the series Águila Roja, a character feature sees her assume the small but vital role of a sinister, she played for several seasons and which earned her a Silver soothsayer-like housekeeper with a stony, penetrating glare. Fotograma in the Best Television Actress category and a Best TV “Julieta marked a change of pace for the frequently frenzied Supporting Actress from the Spanish Actors Union. Her first role filmmaker”, says de Palma. “At the beginning this film was for the big screen was Café solo o con ellas (2007), directed by supposed to be called Silencio, and it works very well this title Álvaro Díaz Lorenzo. Later came El kaserón (2010) by Paul because when it finishes, you have nothing to say,” she says in Martínez, and Primos (2011), by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo. In her lilting Spanish tone. “You think about it, but you don't have 2011 she headlined La voz dormida, helmed by Benito any words; you have to digest it.” She goes on to add, “I don’t Zambrano, for which she garnered her first Goya nomination as know if Pedro would agree, but my feeling is that he’s Best Leading Actress. Between 2011 and 2013 she filmed Grupo entering another era: another Almodóvar…All the emotion 7 (2012), by Alberto Rodríguez, / Snow White has to be there, but not outside, inside. His approach is much (2012), directed by , Invasor (2012), by Daniel more minimalist, much more clean–of course in the train Calparsoro and 3 bodas de más/ Three Many Weddings (2013) by there are the colours, but he didn't let the barocco [baroque] Javier Ruiz Caldera, presented at the Venice Festival to glowing come in.” She appeared in several of his films: Law of Desire reviews. In 2013 she returned to the stage as star of the musical (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), ¡Ay Carmela! A year later she played the lead part in Las ovejas Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), Broken Embraces (2009), and no pierden el tren (2014) and later La novia/ The Bride (2015), two of which earned her two Goya nominations for performances the film bringing her a third Goya nomination and winning her in Kika (1993) and (1995). Besides her Best Leading Actress at the . In 2015 she made acting career, she has been a muse and modeling for the late international headlines when she tweeted her anger at a magazine fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier as well as appearing in that Photoshopped her image so much she didn’t even recognise 's video for "Too Funky" and has her own MAC herself and was left looking like an 'expressionless doll'. cosmetics makeup line (every tube complete with a profile of Alongside the images, she wrote: 'The moment you don't Picasso, naturally). recognize yourself. The actress wrote, “You discover that your image is in the hands of people who have a completely unreal A.O. Scott: “Another Woman on the Verge in Amodovar’s idea of what beauty is.' She claims she was made to look thinner, ‘Julieta’” (NY Times, 20 Dec. 2026) had her neck lengthened and lines removed from her skin. The According to a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, “the art of image appeared on the front page of Dominical magazine as part losing isn’t hard to master.” But making a masterwork on the of a feature on her new film, Wednesdays Don’t Exist. subject of loss, a perennial theme in art, may be harder than it looks. The young adulthood and middle age of Julieta, the heroine of Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie, are shadowed by death and abandonment, which she does her best to handle gracefully. Mr. Almodóvar, for his part, tells her story with his characteristic later-period blend of elegant restraint and keening melodrama. “Julieta” is scrupulous, compassionate and surprising, even if it does not always quite communicate the full gravity and sweep of the feelings it engages. Julieta is played in her 20s by Adriana Ugarte; in middle age by Emma Suárez. The older version is the first person we see, dressed in bright red and living in a spare, modern Madrid apartment. Julieta abruptly ends a romantic relationship with Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti), who seems perfectly nice, and plunges into a sea of reminiscences and regrets. Time spools backward and we encounter her, as Ms. Ugarte, with spiky superblond hair and a bright-blue cowl-neck sweater-dress, on a long train ride. Rossy de Palma (b. September 16, 1964 in Palma de Mallorca, The colors are important because they are part of Mr. Spain) has been a close friend and muse to Almodóvar since he Almodóvar’s emotional vocabulary. In his films, clothes, discovered her in 1986 at a café in Madrid. De Palma—often wallpaper and furniture are never mere details of production referred to as ‘Dama Picasso’ or ‘a Picasso come to life’ on design; they are integral to the world he imagines, a rendering of account of her striking, asymmetric features – first appeared with contemporary Spain filtered through selected works of literature a small cameo in Almodóvar’s 1987 thriller Law of Desire. (The and Hollywood films of the 1950s and accompanied, more often New York Times once called her “unforgettably strange- than not, by the lustrous ache of Alberto Iglesias’s music. looking.”) The director was so impressed by the actress’s Here, as before, the cinematic reference point is onscreen charisma that he cast her again the following year in Douglas Sirk, whose finely wrought, visually lush weepies have Almodóvar—JULIETA—6

long figured among Mr. Almodóvar’s key inspirations. Julieta’s familiar terrain from the filmmaker who gave us the ecstatically experiences — love, marriage, motherhood, small-town life — lurid melodramas “Women on the Verge of a Nervous are drawn from a trilogy of linked short stories by the Canadian Breakdown” and “All About My Mother.” But adapting his writer (and Nobel laureate) Alice Munro. At first, this may seem temperament to match Munro’s signature restraint, Almodóvar an odd match of author and filmmaker. Ms. Munro’s northern tones down his usual over-the-topness in “Julieta,” which owes world is a place of drab, wintry tones and buttoned-up emotions, as much to the sleek, moody thrillers of as it a far cry from Mr. Almodóvar’s empire of passions. does to the supersaturated extravagance of Douglas Sirk. But both artists are attuned to the inner lives of women The film begins as the title character — a chic middle- in societies inclined to take them for granted. Both have an eye aged classics living in Madrid — is preparing to move for the swerves and accidents — the kinks of fate and the tangles to Portugal with her dashing husband, Lorenzo (Darío of desire — that so often determine the destinies and undermine Grandinetti). When Julieta encounters a friend of her daughter the intentions of individuals. Ms. Munro’s characters are, as Antía, from whom she has been estranged for several years, she often as not, women on the edge of something — maybe not a makes the instinctive decision to stay put in the city. Julieta nervous breakdown (not really their bag), but an adventure, a big moves back to the apartment where she and Antía lived together, decision, a moment of belated self-discovery, a lifetime of rue. recapitulating the past as a way of understanding how their lives “Julieta” has all of that, and arranges its plot not only in grew apart and embarking on a mission to knit them back a straight chronological line but also according to a pattern that is together. at once loose and intricate. Young Julieta, a student of classics on Nodding to the movies and telenovelas that he’s always her way to a teaching job, falls for a fisherman named Xoan loved, Almodóvar tells the ensuing story — much of it told in (Daniel Grao) and goes to live with him in a small coastal town. flashback — with well-calibrated suspense and captivating brio, They raise a daughter, Antia, amid ocean breezes and under the interrogating notions of time, doppelgängers and fate with his watchful eye of a busybody (the Almodóvar fixture Rossy de characteristically fastidious attention to color and detail. With a Palma). Julieta befriends Ava (Inma Cuesta), a former lover of palette Xoan’s, and Ava’s sculptures become part of the film’s cabinet dominated by of talismans and symbols. shades of red Julieta’s bliss is shattered by a series of tragedies that and blue, partly seem to have been foretold at other moments in her life. The filmed on the death of a near-stranger is echoed by a later accident much closer romantic seaside to home, and Julieta’s alienation from her father prefigures her of Galicia, eventual estrangement from Antia. The mother-daughter bond, where Julieta fierce and smothering and complicated, lies at the heart of the and Antía’s film, and it is after Antia’s departure that “Julieta” finds its early life was deepest, richest tones. spent, “Julieta” Ms. Suárez suffers with a dignity reminiscent of Bette is a nonstop Davis and other great screen heroines of the past, even as she visual feast, its surrenders to a longing that borders on mania. In a letter to her design elements absent daughter, she likens maternal love to an addiction, and the alone providing second half of her story follows the familiar, agonizing stages of welcome escape from the dreary world. Almodóvar has even recovery, relapse and at least partial or potential redemption. assembled some familiar faces from his informal repertory If the rest does not rise to the level of Mr. Almodóvar’s company of actors, most notably Rossy de Palma, here donning a melodramatic masterworks — “All About My Mother,” “Talk to frizzy wig to play a housekeeper who bears more than a passing Her,” “Bad Education” or “Volver” — “Julieta” is nonetheless a resemblance to the forbidding Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca.” worthy and welcome addition to his canon, the double portrait of a woman perpetually on the verge of understanding who she is. Hitchcock and novelist Patricia Highsmith — who is explicitly referenced here — may provide the most obvious Ann Hornaday, “Pedro Almodóvar channels his inner inspirational subtext for “Julieta,” but Almodóvar makes their Hitchcoks in the captivating ‘Julieta’” (Washington Post,12 most familiar conventions his own, most notably in his ideas for January 2016) casting the doubles who populate his film. The moment when Awash in color, feminine psychodrama and heightened Julieta, alternately played by Emma Suárez in middle age and emotion, “Julieta” is a classic Pedro Almodóvar film — or, more Adriana Ugarte as her younger self, transforms from a young accurately, a classicized version of the Almodóvar films his fans woman to an older one is just one of many masterstrokes in a have come to adore. story whose own identity slips from the slow burn of an erotic Adapted from three short stories from Alice Munro’s thriller to a far deeper, more wrenching study of parental loss, “” collection, this mother-daughter head trip revisits self-recrimination and grief. Almodóvar—JULIETA—7

Suárez is particularly affecting as a woman on the preteen. Then, a tragedy that is so shattering and complete it verge, not of a breakdown, but of being engulfed by absence. At deserves another. I don't want to reveal too much. its most superficially enjoyable, “Julieta” is a mystery story Like Volver and Talk to Her (2002), the plot unfolds in nonlinear propelled by the kinds of coincidence and catastrophe that fashion, lurching forward and back through time to reveal the Almodóvar might have once mined for maximum camp value. family melodrama in full review, an emotional labyrinth that Whether by dint of his source material or his own maturity, the becomes thornier but more engrossing as it progresses. filmmaker has invested the surface sheen with tenderness and In deciding to adopt Munro's material for the screen, emotional depth. It’s no surprise that “Julieta” is marvelous to Almodóvar was evidently seized by one scene in particular, look at, but it possesses just as much substance as style. which takes place on a late-night train ride. It is a fabulous moment, Hitchcockian by nature. Julieta, at her youngest point, meets two men, one of whom dies and one of whom becomes her lover. Sex, death—they are all accounted for. It is the late 1980s—when Almodóvar first surged to prominence with his Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown—and Jean- Claude Larrieu's cinematography captures the period with bright, colorful charm: the deep reds, the brilliant blues, the frizzled blondness of Julieta's post-punk haircut. "It’s a return to the cinema of women, of great female protagonists," Almodóvar said about this movie in an interview last year. Indeed, Suárez and Ugarte are each excellent as the titular Julieta, one worn down by life's cruelty, the other eager for its pleasures. They play the same character but never the same person; what has transpired between them has occasioned some immeasurable gulf. Anybody who has experienced some great, shattering grief knows this to be true. Time heals. It also ravages, Zach Schonfeld: “’Julieta’ is Pedro Almodóvar’s Best Film in rearranges, pulls apart atoms. You're born anew. The working Years” (Newsweek, 23 December 2016) title for this film was apparently Silence—or Silencio, in the Pedro Almodóvar, it seems, grew tired of being Pedro original Spanish—which feels right, since grief so often is Almodóvar for a few years there. In 2011, the Spanish filmmaker experienced in silent isolation. Much of this movie is about the made a foray into psychological horror with the thoroughly pain of trying to keep the past sealed away or unspoken. chilling captivity nightmare The Skin I Live In. I'm So Excited, (Almodóvar changed the title to avoid confusion with Martin his 2013 follow-up, lightened the mood considerably, though the Scorsese's new movie of the same name.) airborne was as fleetingly satisfying as in- I don't know why 2016 has generated so many good or flight Wi-Fi. great movies that are fundamentally about With his 20th and latest picture, Julieta (out stateside grief: Jackie, Manchester by the Sea, One More Time With this week), Almodóvar returns to the melodramatic hallmarks of Feeling (the documentary about Nick Cave), Other People and, his career with inspiration renewed. It is tempting to say that it's arguably, Arrival. It's enough to program one brutal, a return to form, but that tiresome cliché risks underselling how wrenching film festival. But add Julieta to the list. Go see it. fresh and charged the performances are, and how they fade Run. Actually, take the train. slowly into focus, making this the filmmaker's most moving work since 2006's Volver. So let's say this: Julieta is an Jennifer Romney: “Julieta” (BFI Film Forever, 7 April 2017) enthralling meditation on the mechanics of memory and grief One of the enduring pleasures of Pedro Almodóvar’s that will delight the sort of person who uses "Almodóvarian" as cinema is his mastery of narrative complexity: his films often an adjective. seem to be generated by a set of completely disparate events and The script is loosely based on three different stories by ideas from which he constructs narratives that are coherent but the Canadian writer Alice Munro, each taken from Runaway, her nevertheless tend to burst at the seams with their own sometimes 2004 collection. Emma Suárez plays Julieta, a middle-aged narrowly contained dissonances and incongruities. Julieta is woman planning a move from Madrid to Portugal with her entirely characteristic of Almodóvar in the sheer density of companion, Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti). She appears somehow elements, both narrative and symbolic, that it comprises: among broken, wracked by some unspoken grief. After an unexpected them, the geographic diversity of the settings; a heroine, Julieta, street encounter with a childhood friend of her absent daughter, played at different ages by two actresses; the chain of Julieta’s she spirals into uncertainty—about the move, about Lorenzo, different homes; and symbolic ingredients that include a stag about everything. glimpsed at night from a train window, a lecture on Greek In flashbacks, which subsume most of the narrative, mythology and the statuettes of seated men with truncated limbs Adriana Ugarte plays a younger Julieta, a radiant blonde who made by Julieta’s sculptor friend Ava. begins a life with her mysterious, rugged lover Xoan after she The miracle of Julieta is that it feels as loose and becomes pregnant with his child. They have a daughter; they multiple as the above suggests, yet at the same time very tight settle in a gorgeous seaside house; the baby grows into a and unified. Among the film’s themes are the complexity and Almodóvar—JULIETA—8

seeming diffuseness of a person’s life, and the hidden patterns energetic woman open to all that life can offer her, is played by created by the interaction of contingency and memory; as an Adriana Ugarte and visually presented in a heightened manner. academic specialising in Greek myth, Julieta is a highly qualified She’s first seen in bright-blue stockings and leather miniskirt, reader of the ‘novel’ of her existence. with a shock of blonde hair, as if she’s stepped out of a mid-80s The film is Almodóvar’s third literary adaptation, Almodóvar comedy – or as if she were the older Julieta’s stylised following the Ruth Rendell-inspired Live Flesh (1997) and The version of her remembered self. Skin I Live In (2011), based on Thierry Jonquet’s Tarantula. The Julieta of the framing narrative is played with a This time, however, the source is not a novel but three deeply poignant careworn dignity by Emma Suárez, whom UK consecutive short stories from Alice Munro’s 2004 collection audiences may remember as an angelic ingénue in such Julio Runaway. Although each Munro story stands alone and covers a Medem films as Tierra (1996). Twenty years on, she’s a perfect separate episode and theme, cross-references make it clear that fit for a ‘haunted mature woman’ role that might previously have they can all be read as concerning the same woman, Juliet, at been played by . Almodóvar cleverly, but in no different periods. Munro’s three stories effectively provide all the way callously, makes capital of the fact that Suárez is visibly material that Almodóvar dramatises here. older than some viewers may remember her – notably in the Where the director has scope to make his film properly extraordinary coup de cinéma in which Julieta (Ugarte), bathed Almodóvarian is partly in knitting Munro’s three vignettes into a by her daughter, emerges from under a towel several years later single narrative of characteristic intricacy; and partly in imposing as her older self (Suárez), her face visibly marked by life’s cares. his unmistakable stylistic signature, with all the signals of In the version of this scene depicted on the film’s poster, the Spanishness that entails. protective, caring Antía (never seen in the film as a grown Originally planned as his first English-language film, woman) is replaced by the young Julieta as played by Ugarte, Julieta has been transplanted from the original Canadian settings highlighting the lesson of Julieta’s interweaving of doubling, to Madrid, Galicia, the Pyrenees and elsewhere. The film is maternity and memory: to wit, that the child is mother to the steeped in overtly foregrounded style, right from the image seen woman. in the opening credits: draped red fabric that pulses like a human heart but turns out to be Julieta’s dress. Throughout, the expressionistic exuberance that we associate with the Almodóvar look is rooted firmly in a realistic everyday context by Antxón Gómez’s production design and Sonia Grande’s costumes: we are constantly shown the autonomous expressive power of, say, a certain wallpaper pattern, shelves of Galician pottery, the retro dress worn by Julieta’s elderly mother. There is also the Klimt- style dressing gown that Julieta wears in one of her solitary moments, its vividness strikingly clashing with her melancholy, and perhaps itself helping to save her from outright despair. This tantalisingly open-ended film is Almodóvar’s most sombre to date: it is to his last feature, 2013’s airline farce I’m So Excited!, as Interiors (1978) was to ’s Bananas Mark Kermode: “Almodóvar’s five-star return to form” (1971). Julieta is overtly serious in its concern with loss and the (, 29 August 2016) mature retrospective contemplation of life’s complexity, its Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, his most visual energy contrasting strongly with its emotional severity and moving and entrancing work since 2006’s Volver, is a sumptuous the almost total absence of either comedy or manifest narrative and heartbreaking study of the viral nature of guilt, the mystery playfulness (the only echo of the famed Almodóvar ‘camp’ is a of memory and the often unendurable power of love. At times, glimpse of one character’s fashionista friends). Where he is often the emotional intrigue plays more like a Hitchcock thriller than a associated with melodrama, in Julieta Almodóvar has professed romantic melodrama, with Alberto Iglesias’s superb to be creating ‘pure drama’, free of excess or fancy: hence the Herrmannesque score (the director cites Toru Takemitsu, Mahler part played by classical mythology, which young Julieta teaches, and Alban Berg as influential) heightening the noir elements, and which reinforces the transcendental resonances of her own darkening the bold splashes of red, blue and white. Three short experiences. stories from the Canadian author Alice Munro’s 2004 Above all, Julieta is a study in duality. It involves, for volume Runaway provide the source material, but the spirit of example, two young women both guilt-stricken at their presumed Patricia Highsmith looms large as strangers on a train fuel the responsibility for a death (a train suicide in Julieta’s case; in the circling narrative (one character even observes that he is case of her daughter Antía, the drowning of her father) and two becoming a Highsmith obsessive). I was also startled to find relationships involving another woman in the frame (Ava’s echoes of George Sluizer’s Dutch-French 1988 double is the young north African mistress of Julieta’s father). chiller Spoorloos in the depiction of a life defined by the The doubling begins with the fact that the heroine is played by disappearance of a loved one, although there is a tenderness here two different actresses. The young Julieta, a vital, intellectually wholly lacking from Sluizer’s altogether more unforgiving work. Almodóvar—JULIETA—9

Emma Suárez is fabulous as together to face her past; a blue Julieta, a beautiful, erudite, middle- garment framing a crimson cake that is aged woman leaving Madrid for ritually binned as another lonely Portugal to start a new life with birthday passes. Lorenzo (Talk to Her’s Darío After the exhaustingly camp Grandinetti). But a chance meeting sociopolitical satire of 2013’s I’m So with a childhood friend of her Excited!, it’s a relief to find Almodóvar estranged daughter, Antía, sideswipes returning to the more introspective Julieta’s future plans. Instead of themes of such superior work as All moving forward, she returns to the About My Mother or The Flower of My apartment block where she and Antía Secret. Yet for all the director’s once lived, to write the story of their avowed “desires for containment” in a tragic, quasi-mythical odyssey. drama that he insists contains no Transported back to the 80s, we meet the younger Julieta, now “humour or any mixing of genres”, Julieta still manages to unite played with equal vigour by Adriana Ugarte, one of the film’s the disparate elements of Almodóvar’s unruly career. As many talismanic doublings. For this spiky-haired classics teacher the current BFI Southbank retrospective reminds us, he’s come a (Greek myth flows through these stories), a nocturnal train long way from the punky bawdiness of Pepi, Luci, Bom. There is journey provides a fateful brief encounter with love and death, a Bergmanesque quality to Almodóvar’s focus on Suárez’s face laying the tracks for all that is to come: her relationship with in Julieta which speaks volumes about his journey from enfant Galician fisherman Xoan (Daniel Grao), the birth of their terrible to elder statesman. As portrayed by Ugarte, however, the beloved daughter, Antía, and the predestined separation from younger Julieta would not have seemed out of place in Women both. on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Almodóvar initially planned to use Munro’s stories as Down! or High Heels, a reminder that the ghosts of Almodóvar’s the basis of an English-language feature, yet bringing the back catalogue (highlighted here by the iconic presence of material to Spain puts the writer-director on fertile home ground. longtime muse Rossy de Palma) are as present as the past lives As with 1997’s Live Flesh and 2011’s The Skin I Live that haunt our heroine. In, Julieta may have a literary source but the result is entirely Almodóvar’s own. We open on a close-up of the undulating folds Deftly conjoining the two central performances is a of a crimson dress, resembling both a heart and flower, signalling breathtakingly simple sequence that encapsulates Almodóvar’s the thicker-than-water themes that will course through the genius. As a young Antía dries her devastated mother’s hair, narrative. As Julieta moves back and forth through time and Ugarte’s face disappears beneath a towel and re-emerges as that space, Sonia Grande’s costumes and Antxón Gómez’s production of Suárez, Julieta’s youthful visage transformed by grief. design tell their own story – the stark lines of a room in which Whether through coma, depression or dementia, this is a drama the past has been erased contrasting with the noisy clutter of a littered with characters living an underworld existence, trapped space filled with memories; the fragmented patterns of a gown by the great silence that is the true villain of the piece. Having matching the jagged edges of a torn photograph that Julieta sticks been swept along by Almodóvar’s vision, I felt that silence deserved to be broken by tumultuous applause.

ONLY ONE MORE IN THE FALL 2017 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXV December 5: Billy Wilder Some Like it Hot 1959

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News