It is difficult for me to evaluate Almodóvar’s films, because this wet path clearly leads to a swamp, into which it will either drag without residue or turn into a local forest.
Nevertheless, once I got ready, voila: from this film I understood this funny Spaniard, took him with numerous cockroaches and even fell in love. Still, so to make a movie about complex and tragic topics with necessarily flickering hope in the distance - talent!
This is the story of a mother who lost herself in a lost daughter. Behind the typical mistakes of life, which led to tragic consequences. That's the plot.
Further on this engraving talentedly overturns the colors of a man so subtly understanding women that I, right, take off my hat. There's everything here - there's not just negative heroes. All of them are so voluminous and complex in their simplicity that it looks in one breath.
Look at you, too, make yourself happy. Women will like it, men will like it if possible.
The film is based on the works of the Nobel laureate Alice Munro, which I have not read, so it was possible to avoid the inevitable comparisons with the original source. This is a quality melodrama characteristic of the director, shot beautifully in Almodovar’s favorite red tones. I did not watch without interest, but did not discover anything new for myself, in my opinion, he is somewhat weaker than his previous films. This is the story of the life of a woman endowed with both intelligence and beauty, who found her happiness, but lost it, as did her daughter, who left her 12 years ago, and she was never able to find her. The obvious schematicity of the plot presented is visible, the logic of the actions of the heroes is not visible, the end did not convince me either. Perhaps it was in vain that he took female prose as a basis?
Pedro Almodovar is a unique director who opened Spanish cinema to the world. In addition, his works can be deservedly called real works of art that catch the viewer not only with visual aesthetics, but also with the meaning embedded in them. Mostly in his works he touches on human relationships and their worldview. One of his last works, in which he touched on the topic of women, was the psychological drama “Juliet”.
A resident of Madrid Juliet is preparing to move to Portugal with her fiancé writer Lorenzo to start a new life. However, a sudden meeting with a friend from the past rebukes her old wounds and memories of her daughter Antia, whom Juliet has not seen for the past 12 years. Determined to reconnect with her daughter, she writes a long letter in which she tries to explain at what point in her life there was a breakdown that led to such a long quarrel with her only daughter.
Game of actors In fact, the film impressed with the demonstration of one female image by two different actresses, each of whom contributed to its creation. Emma Suarez, who played the role of Juliet today, embodied the image of a desperate mother, yearning for her own child, the desire to see which prevents her from returning to normal life. Adriana Ugarte as a young Juliet embodied the image of a girl who first learned what love and real passion are, and as a result, mad jealousy and prolonged depression.
Pedro Almodovar is deservedly included in the list of my favorite directors who have their own independent author style. Like his previous paintings, "Juliet" is also replete with a hot Spanish flavor, seasoned with passionate emotions of heroes who commit acts that they later have to regret. Visually, the film is also everywhere objects favorite director rich red: red dress, red nails, red wall, red road sign, red car, red tattoo, etc. But with all this in “Juliet” there is no intrigue that would keep the viewer in suspense. Instead of a deeply penetrating psychological drama, the viewer expects a picture of the world of women who are madly in love with their men and attached to their children. It does not reveal any secret human vices, the film simply demonstrates the thoughts, feelings and emotions of a woman who is gnawing guilt.
Scenario In terms of the plot, the film is initially built as a detective drama, in which the viewer will have to learn what exactly happened in the past of the main character, which led to such a long separation from her only daughter and a deep depression that forced Juliet to protect herself from the outside world. From periodic flashbacks, we learn the passionate story of true love, the fruit of which was little Antiya. However, a fit of jealousy and an unfortunate coincidence leads to a terrible tragedy that broke Juliet and at the same time began to distance her daughter from the heroine. Viewers should not expect an unexpected denouement in the style of Agatha Christie, because the story is completely banal. At the same time, she focuses on the internal and external changes of Juliet, who still managed to let go of inner pain.
Result In principle, Juliet is not a bad movie. Although the film is not so clearly expressed expressive style of Almodóvar and a burning Spanish mentality, nevertheless, the film leaves a pleasant impression of the affected world of determined, free and attractive women.
7 out of 10
Over the past six years, the main director of modern Spain shot three radically different in style of film. After Hitchcock’s reading of the myth of Pygmalion in “The Skin I Live in” and places of squabbling, poisonously satirical, but at the same time kind and touching “Passengers in Love”, Almodovar produced perhaps the loneliest film in his career – “Hulieta” (or, as it was called in the Russian box office, “Julietta”), an adaptation of three novels by Alice Munro from the collection “The Fugitive” (Nobel Prize in Literature-2013). By the way, it is this book that Vera reads in one of the scenes in Skin. Transferring the trilogy of stories of “Canadian Chekhov” to Spanish soil, and also working with such an atypical style for yourself is a bold task, and the director coped with it perfectly. It is worth noting that in “Juliet” the accents are placed differently than in the literary source, it is difficult to call the adaptation of it: the Spanish master turned out to be a completely independent work. But at the same time, the critics are right, who called this film the peak of deconstruction by the director of his style and the most “non-Almodovar” of his film, as well as the most tragic and restrained in his career.
Here Buñuel’s heir almost abandoned everything that he loved so much in his previous films and came to a completely new style for himself – an intellectual psychological drama in which the analysis of the inner world of the characters coexists with the developed system of leitmotifs, philosophical overtones, and the visual picture is aestheticized like never before. The game with the color scheme in the film is paid no less attention than, say, in the canvas of some classical artist. However, as before, in his twentieth feature film, the director mixes different cinematic genres, but this time the psychological drama, melodrama and thriller go hand in hand ... with the ancient tragedy, where the ball is ruled by Rock. This antique tragedy, it turns out, can be read in the fate of the modern inhabitant of Madrid - one of the thousands of people who are in love.
The psychological component of the film, it seems, is simple, repeats the well-known but necessary truths – that the lack of emotional contact, empathy, inability to express their feelings, talk about what is tormenting, unwillingness or again inability to feel the pain of another leads to the irreparable; that conflicts should be solved, and not run away from them into silence.
However, this is only the first level of the story. In the future, the picture acquires other, more complex and deep echoes. Composition plays an important role in this. Twice the fate of the characters will be reflected in each other, as if in a mirror, and the various characters will seem almost doubles of each other. Follow the parallels between Julieta and Juan, her father and her mother’s nurse, and the fates of Julieta’s husband and grandson, all bearing the same name. This fatal fixation of life, which repeats the previous plots again and again becomes as if the background of the picture, bears an echo of a certain ontological code that rules the fates of the living with ironic cruelty.
There are many antique quotes in the film. And when the heroine, a literature teacher, tells her students about the Odyssey and the understanding of the sea as a road, as a thirst for a new life, she tells about herself - a girl who dreams of breaking out of the world of books into a world so desirable and inaccessible to her before. Then the plot of Odysseus-Calypso will cast a shadow on her relationship with Juan, and the line of Odysseus-Telemachus – on the relationship with her daughter.
The sea has a huge place in the system of images of the picture. It turns either into a symbol or into an independent character, turns out to be the personification of an ancient blind force that exists side by side with man and speaks of the irrationality of the elements that govern the universe.
Very important for understanding the subtexts of this story is the myth that the heroine tells a friend. That the gods had no gifts left for men, with which they endowed other creatures - and people came out the most orphaned of their creations, defenseless and alone amid the storms and storms of the blind seas. So do heroes. Their fate is an illustration of this nakedness of a man standing confusedly in the midst of wild, raging nature.
Such an existential abyss suddenly reaches the story of a woman whose daughter cut her out of life. Never before has Almodovar reached such heights. And that, of course, is his huge victory.
Watching “Hulieta” is recommended for all fans of good intellectual cinema. This is a movie that needs to be felt and thought through. It will really be revealed, rather from the second view. And what he will certainly give is the opportunity to touch beauty. Which appears in the running among the snow-capped fields of the deer, and in the landscapes of Spain, and in the dusk of the streets of Madrid, and in the outlines of the naked bodies of heroes, and in the aesthetic reality, crucified between red and blue tones.
Pedro Almodovar is one of my favorite directors. To his paintings personally, I always treat with great anticipation. Every time you start watching his new movie, you get ready for something that is really interesting. Almodovar has long raised the bar high, so his films are always treated immediately with high demands.
Before our attention is his film called "Juliet". Mysterious poster and intriguing trailer immediately intrigued me, and I immersed myself in this new film. "Return", "All about my mother"The skin in which I live" are so amazing films from Pedro that you always hope that the director will repeat his success again and create something amazing.
We see the story of a woman who left her daughter and left for an unknown destination. It was as if Juliet's heart had been ripped from her chest, and without her daughter she began to wither. The daughter was everything to her. The heroine returns to her native Madrid, and here her strongest memories of youth, love and tragedy emerge. Why did my daughter leave Juliet? There is a mystery and the reason why the daughter left the heartbroken mother.
The atmosphere in which this director makes his films is like nothing. All films of Almodovaora are always somewhat similar. They are unique and have their own charm. I love how the director makes his films and presents them. Pedro A wonderful director. His new film was something of a curiosity to me. I’m not going to say he made another masterpiece, no, but his new film definitely deserves attention. The story is full of forgotten, again shocking secrets, good acting and a kind of nostalgia that I always have, watching the films of this director.
I previously unknown Spanish actresses both hail from Madrid Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte after this film are well remembered. The choice of these actresses was successful, and they revealed their Juliet in their youth and nowadays. The character was successful, and Juliet seemed to me a very strong personality, which had a series of trials. The loss of a loved one is always scary, but this story is not trivial, and is full of surprises and secrets purely in the style of this director, master of human passions.
Juliet is a Spanish melodrama with a taste of drama in 2016. The next film from Almodóvar will be to the liking of all fans of his films. I appreciated the picture and said yes. Thank you very much.
“Time, like the sea, unleashes all knots” (Iris Murdoch, “Sea, Sea”)
7.5 out of 10
There are such areas and themes in art, where many people are ordered to go, despite their apparent simplicity and comprehensibility in the daily cycle of life. And there are artists in art who go through these prohibitions to ennoble these simple themes with their delicate touch. One of these knights of a beautiful image is Pedro Almadovar, who presented the amazing story of his mother in the film “Juliet” (or, to be exact, “Hulieta” in Spanish).
Gradually withdrawing into increasingly quiet waters, avoiding bubbling rivers with dangerous rapids and the roar of waves, the Spanish artist with some jewelry precision builds his film. On some micro-movements, subtle nuances, details hidden in subtext. Less and less in the Almadovar artistic paradigm of shocking and kitschy, less and less desire to play on the verge of foul. His path from protest and grotesque to lyricism is now gradually moving into another stage - philosophy and contemplation. And here it is time to compare Almadovar not with a jeweler, but with a surgeon dissecting the world of a woman, looking for the secret of her vitality and ability to rebirth.
The answer that Almadovar gives again seems obvious: it is motherhood. One way or another, he talked about it more than once - and in "All About My Mother", and in "Return" - but here, in "Juliet" without shock therapy for the viewer talks about it somehow calmer. Perhaps his voice, devoid of tear, sounds more meticulous and convincing, and therefore leaves you trembling after itself - nervous tremors penetrate not only your mind, but also your body, although, I repeat, Almadovar did not seem to resort to any shockers and techniques. In the obviousness of the answer and in the tone with which he gives it, the essence of his many years of reflection. And they are undeniable for him.
Motherhood is not the realization of the reproductive function of the female body and not the complex chemistry of its hormones. According to Pedro Almadovar, this is the sacrament, the power of a woman and her essence, the opportunity to open up and realize themselves. That's what inspires you. The director doesn't idealize a woman's condition when she has a child: it's directly related to pain, anxiety and anxiety. And the fate of Juliata is precisely about pain, behind which inexhaustible reserves of strength and love are opened. They are expressed in the capacity for forgiveness and the willingness to start all over again, in the courage of faith, in a hope which, according to La Rochefoucault, leads us in the easiest way, however deceptive it may be.
The plan of expression and the plan of content are so skillfully correlated in Juliet that you easily slide in your reasoning from plan to embodiment, from directorial techniques to semantic layers. Almadovar molds his female universe, where the actress becomes his material - no matter how he handles his mster, he retains his original properties, and the sculptor or artist always chooses the one that most suits his artistic tasks. So Almadovar, filming the actress, allows her to reincarnate, but only to a certain extent: the essence, the core of the image she brings herself - it is her individuality, beauty or special uglyness, characteristic and, of course, talent. These are his muses of different years: Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura, Penelope Cruz. And here in Juliet we see a special ensemble: Adriana Ugarte, Emma Suarez (both play Julieta), Inma Cuesta and Rossi de Palma. They create magnetic fields around them that interact, collide and sometimes create large and small explosions.
Once again, the heroine is tormented by the ghosts of the past, but in the story that Julieta tells her daughter, there is nothing revealing (so familiar to us in the films of Pedro Almadovar), only remorse and an inexhaustible sense of guilt. But living with them is not a crime. And this is the eternal thought of many women, who so often knock in the temples: did I do everything possible for the happiness of my child?
In the story, the daughter of the main character many years ago ran away from home. The heroine (Julietta) has lost all hope of finding her, until one day she meets a friend on the street - a longtime friend of her daughter. She admits that she saw her once.
The events of the film unfold in two storylines: the present, when Juliet resumes attempts to return to her former life and find her daughter; and a reference to the past. The heroine remembers her life and the events that led to the sad finale.
The painting by Almodóvar, as always, turned out to be very Spanish. Saturated colors, ranging from sea blue and ending with the outfits of the heroine. Music in the style of flamenco: guitar roughshods, an explosive female voice. Even the modern city has characteristic, non-European features. Every thing that got into the frame is self-sufficient, an example is the statuettes of the artist Ava (Inma Cuesta).
I want to celebrate the game of Rossi de Palma (Marian). This is not the first time she has appeared in Almodóvar’s films. Frankly ugly appearance of the actress, contrasts with the desire to watch her play, to see in the frame.
The main character (Adriana Ugarte) perfectly managed to show the type of women who have both physical beauty and intelligence, relaxation (her first night with the future father of the child), at the same time she does not seem affordable or openly seductive. It is self-sufficient and perfect in its own way. The adult heroine (Emma Suarez) masterfully continues this merger.
The director is characterized by extraordinary female images and compromising endings. Well, in this case, he succeeded more than ever. The ending is both the film’s strength and its weakness. Even open it can be called with a stretch. However, Pedro Almadovar has the right to afford it.
The impression of watching in the cinema completely loops on the final stage. The only question is, “And?” Show me something else.” The course of the narrative can be compared only with a spring that was compressed, and when released, it remained in the same position. It’s not even a mystery, but rather a desire to see how it all happens.
The film is about the fact that there are not always answers in life. Sometimes there is only an unsolved question and the unstoppable passage of time.
8 out of 10
A woman who is pleasant to watch, but not interesting to listen to
Succulent bright scenery, charming soundtrack, incredibly attractive young Juliet. Unfortunately, that’s all that the film remembers. Beautiful shiny wrapper hides bland and tasteless content.
It is clear that the idea of the picture is to tell a difficult life story. And I don't mind, I'm ready to empathize and cry. Just tell this story in an interesting and believable way, write down logical dialogues and a clear system of character motivation.
But alas, we have to watch the narrative for an hour and a half in the style: ' I went there, I don't know where, because I wanted to, but then changed my mind'. Juliet is constantly in trouble, one more serious than the other. With stress, she does not cope, and therefore gradually withers, sour and plunges into despondency. And with it, and a bored audience.
The ending is strong and ambiguous, so if you start, look to the end. Fortunately, the film is prudently not stretched, laid compactly and concisely.
To begin with, I confess that I treat all Almodóvar films with awe True, I did not see his penultimate, I think, movie & #39; Lovers-passengers' because something embarrassed me, and I did not want to be disappointed. And the charm was from the very first film, which I happened to see a very, very long time ago, I think more than 20 years ago, with ' Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown' There are Almodovar films that I love very much, there are those that I treat quite calmly, but they in any case give me aesthetic pleasure almost every shot, yes, I am receptive to the play of color, to the composition of the frame, and I consider Almodovar the best director for aesthetes.
I do not understand the reviews of disappointed viewers. People complain about the lack of bright burlesque twists of the plot, gypsy with the output (well, replace the last phrase with ' flamenco'). No, there is nothing so dizzying here to find, but at the same time, with the simplicity of the plot and composition (it is simple, despite the fact that the narrative is conducted in 2 time plans), you clearly understand that this is Almodovar’s film, even if you did not know if you missed the credits, you would not be mistaken with the name of the director. The whole visual series, familiar, though aged faces of some actors came from his strange world into a rather mundane world, but they alienated him (I remember that derivatives of this word were found as terms in formalist philologists). That is, there is something extraordinary behind the ordinary, and Almodovar only hints at it slightly, which looks, in my opinion, incredible. This is definitely a new stage in the development of the artist, not a fall, not a degradation. 'Juliet' is a very mature film of an absolutely adult, not an old man, who has no need and need to flirt with the audience, but remained interested in the difficult world of women, and the former basic means of expression remained.
Some of the footage, scenes, I will probably review, although I rarely do. They are just beautiful: a deer running outside a train window, a red car moving among green trees. Incredible pictures, incredible. . .
I wonder what will happen next, waiting for the next film, not at all old, but already an adult (late, probably matured) Almodóvar.
10 out of 10
The movie is worth watching, especially for women. Even though it was very emotional and emotional, it didn’t cause me any problems. The main feeling after watching “Julietta” – unjustified expectations. Hence the disappointment.
The plot is boring, from the first frames a certain intrigue is involved and you are still waiting
What is it, where is its expansion and, finally, its culmination? But there is no climax. And you keep waiting and waiting... And the screen just shows the story of the life of a beautiful woman, her meetings, feelings, deprivations, experiences. Showed the truth worthy and interesting, pity no more.
Looking deeper, the biggest disappointment is the script. Almodovar is a wonderful director and screenwriter, deep, atypical. His work, whether you like it or not, always touches. His scripts are not trivial, emotional, sometimes caustic, extraordinary. From him you always expect some intrigue, highlights, sparks, something that will undoubtedly surprise you. Unfortunately, this is not the case...
Now for the merits of Juliet. The first is timekeeping. The film is only an hour and a half and it is beautiful, looks easy, everything capacious and fit exactly at this time. Of course, the colors, especially in the beginning. His attention to the interior, scenery, bright colors. This director is true to himself. It looks great.
And the main advantage of the picture is women! Of course, Almodovar can shoot women like no other. And he proved it again. Both actresses (young and not very Juliet) are beautiful, organic, memorable, you want to look at them. This is a great aftertaste.
They would have a finely twisted, extraordinary plot, but it does not exist. Sorry.
Almodóvar’s films have long been a separate category and require a separate evaluation based on his preferences and interests. You can assemble a Rubik's cube from a layered palette, put it in a monolithic state, and then disassemble it again, tearing stickers off its plastic surface. It is possible to elevate expression into a sense of contentment by a slow procession of the cross among the atheist society. You can take a woman, rip off her clothes, then skin, swing the soul to air and slowly wander along her spiral staircases.
The tragedies and emotions of the women this Spaniard paints are simple, yet at the same time vulgar, understandable, yet expressive and hyperbolic. The story of Juliet, a simple woman who lost her daughter for decades, is full of emotional experiences that willy-nilly have to stretch for the entire timekeeping. For history is not made to capture, but to girdle.
On the fleeting sketch, once so cute appeared on the next floor of the spiral staircase, so quietly entered, without knocking, and instilled confidence in its fate, there are meetings and images that do not have a specific meaning and the disclosure of which is hidden under the shadow of slowly creeping titles. The tape has no structure, no motivation, actions are hidden under tears and memories like old oily leaves of a diary that you mentally turn when walking home from work. Everything is painted with the former watercolor, each plot element has a corresponding color, and its filling dies under its image, realizing that nothing can counter the author's priority.
This is the beauty of Almodovar - he even from the most unsophisticated picture paints the canvas with bright colors. Even if it is indifferent, even if it is completely indifferent to the history that is happening to a person. You need a different medicine.
Almodovar operates female images like a deck of cards, deftly and exquisitely, at the same time all the men in this story abruptly appear and also abruptly disappear, leaving only reminders of their presence, once so important, but already absolutely useless. They have nothing to take, the director does not see them as pleasure and renounces them, literally immediately replacing them with new, equally replaceable ones. The main character herself is dead in her bright surroundings. Acting as if slowly rotating on the hinge body of the deceased in a coffin with color music, she manages to make sharp actions that immediately lead her to dismay, as well as the viewer.
And once again, you stand in front of the reference window, where the lady who eats ice cream, painted with bright pink lipstick, is waiting for your question. “Maybe I’m the only one who can’t see it, maybe Almodovar is so thin that she sits in every Juliet’s shower while she’s ventilated?” The answer is no, she smiles sweetly and goes to the chocolate bar, closes the door and walks away, leaving the little points of view of her heels in the fresh ground.
Juliet is waiting, we do not see the questions, we do not wait for answers, and everything, according to the chronicle of the interchanges, is solved.
“How exactly the color is chosen,” we say, but we can no longer remember the heroine’s face. Thank you for not walking down the stairs without a trace.
The premiere of the new film of the world’s most famous Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, was held this year at the Cannes Film Festival, of which he is a favorite. It was here that he received awards for both directing in 1999 (" All About My Mother) and Best Screenplay in 2006 (" Return).
“Julietta”, as always in Almodóvar, is dedicated to women whom the titled Spaniard adores. This time he explores the theme of guilt that haunts women throughout their adult lives.
Based on three short stories by Nobel and Booker winner Alice Munro, the film follows the life of Juliet (originally Juliet, modified for greater sympathies by our distributor). In the beginning, she is a young teacher looking for her own way in life. Accidental travel companion on the train, committed suicide, the death of her husband, who left after a quarrel to go fishing in the storm, leaving her daughter in a sect - all these events will torment the heroine throughout her life, and the very feeling of guilt and depression at some point overnight will age Juliet.
The scene of the transformation of the heroine from a young woman into an aging woman, brought to the poster, is perhaps the strongest in the entire film. Unfortunately, there are not many such scenes in the film. Surprisingly, the director, known as one of the most vivid and gushing crazy plots (remember at least “Talk to her” or “the skin I live in”) and color solutions of his paintings, shot one of the most bland and boring films of this year. The course of the events of the film is so slow that at some point it can even put the modern viewer to sleep. The events taking place on the screen lie flat and monotonous, like the lines in Juliet's diary.
Unlike his previous films, which Almodovar with a light hand populated with transvestites, prostitutes, freaks, in the new film there is nothing like it in sight. There are no unexpected plot twists and extreme situations in which the characters would find themselves. Alas, but removing his signature oddities, the director has not figured out how to replace them. In the end, there is almost nothing in the film. For an hour and a half, the patient viewer only has to wait for something to begin. But nothing starts like that until the final credits.
Of the pluses of the picture, it is possible to note the signature Almodovar colors - the scenery of the tape caresses the viewer's eye, as well as the beauty of actresses playing Juliet at different periods of her life. Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suarez are so similar that at some point it even seems that these miracles of makeup allow the same actress to play on the screen several decades of the life of the main character.
Unfortunately, this is where the movie ends. As, perhaps, the career of the Spanish director is leaning towards its sunset. Already on his previous film, released three years ago comedy “I am very excited”, it was clear that Almodovar is in crisis. The lack of a clear, interesting plot was striking then, the naked eye can see it now.
And let someone praise his new film, saying that the director has grown up, gained wisdom and can now seriously talk about serious things. And so in “Juliet” he simply no longer needs the brand extreme details of stories and crazy heroes that made him famous all over the world.
Yeah, "Juliet" is serious. But it is also boring, and completely devoid of any energy and inspiration. This is a film by an aging director, and unfortunately not in terms of experience and knowledge. It is as if life is barely warm in it.
Let us hope that the Spaniard will come out of his creative depression sooner or later. And we will see his new, juicy and vivid paintings with crazy heroes living in the mad, mad, insane world of Pedro Almodóvar.
6 out of 10
What is the name of this thing... the pipe is like a spy, you look at it and twist it, and there colored glass lines line up in pictures ...
Madrid. Beautiful and well-groomed woman. There is a loving man who offers to go with him to Portugal. It seems like a perfect picture of the world... On Juliet Street (Adriana Ugarte, Emma Suarez) meets her daughter’s girlfriend and this circumstance begins to unfold the tangle of events.
It turns out that Antiya’s daughter left more than a decade ago, leaving no return address or note. Juliet refuses to move, returns to an old apartment, opens a blank notebook and begins writing letters to her daughter. . In front of the viewer, a photo of the family is collected, torn into pieces. What circumstances led to the escape of Antia, how Juliet lived all these 12 years.
Why did Antia run away and start over? Because of her religious beliefs, or because there came a point where she just couldn't cope. And at this moment, a person needs something more radical than reflection and dialogue, a person needs to completely change his life. Place of stay, surrounding people, profession, etc. Completely eliminate all reminders, all reference points. We have to change everything. In these moments, it doesn’t matter to everyone, sometimes it’s the only way to survive. And maybe resentment at the mother is the only resource that helped to cope with the pain and survive the loss of a beloved father.
Nothing is more interesting than human life. And nothing like that, life, but Almodovar is so full and colorfully conveys the emotions and feelings that we run past that you begin to focus on the new, the simplest and most important thing.
10 out of 10
The bottom is not a review, but a reflection out loud. Spoiler on the spoiler! I didn’t read to anyone else!
So what's the movie about?
A movie about the disease?
The wife of a sailor is sick - he finds other women for himself.
The mother is sick, the father builds his life.
The main character is sick - her daughter escapes from her as from leprosy, without saying a word of explanation.
Whatever the illness, physical or spiritual, everyone flees from the sick. Because 'failures are contagious'? (This is from a different movie.)
Is this a movie about the causes of the disease?
That's another question.
Why the first two women are chained to bed is not told to the viewer. And over the causes of mental illness of the main character will have to think independently. A quick glance captures the loss of a husband and the inability to cope with the loss. The film story itself is told in such a short precipitous manner that one involuntarily thinks: ' why does the director use this technique?' It's like he doesn't give time to think, like it doesn't matter. This is probably not important at the stage when one can draw erroneous conclusions without covering all the details of the picture. Many moments are perceived as pure surrealism, we seem to be led away from some impulsive thoughts, in order to allow them all to rush at once and clarify everything at once. Juliet is silent, her daughter is silent, her sculptor friend is silent, her daughter’s friend is silent. The main character is silent throughout the film. She is silent with her father about her sick mother, she is silent with her husband about their quarrel, she is silent with her daughter all the time, as if there were no questions to discuss. Of course, some phrases are technically spoken. But in light of the precipitous narrative, they look quite formal, superficial, if you will. The director deliberately shows us the fact of concealing his experiences. There must be a lot of them. And here's what happens. She knows how to help her mother, but she does nothing. Silently leaving for years. She walks away from talking to her husband, who openly declares his position, which leads him to a rash act and, as a result, to tragedy. She's silent with her daughter. It does not save her from her own mistakes and from her own fate.
And a daughter. Her silence is the strongest. She is so desperate to share her sorrows that she runs away, losing all ties to her family and her entire past. He is silent about all his deep grievances and will not even reproach his mother once. Payback comes even faster. The tragedy repeats itself.
At least something in this world should teach these women to speak out firmly and boldly.
So what's the movie about? Sharing skills? And joy and sorrow? To share with anyone: with the near and with strangers.
Why is sharing joy a good thing, and woe to everyone a burden? Maybe this is the cause of all diseases.
- Oh, Soledad, who will respond at an early age?
- Whom I call, he hears. What are you talking about?
I call my joy, maybe she will come back.
Federico Garcia Lorca
She lives in an uncomfortable house without a man, he just comes. She carefully loves and carefully accepts love, wants to take root in a foreign country, because she has no roots. Small, light, with a half-confused (as if in the literal sense of the word, half-lost features) face and weightless body, she will half-jump; what she has inside - no one can read the gently scattered lines of the first wrinkles. A chance meeting turns everything around – a name emerges from the past, the sound of which makes you change your face and change your life, or rather, return the one left behind.
Almodóvar's new film is both his creation and not. It seems as if, having divided the woman’s life into before and after, giving her role to two actresses, the ripe beauty Adriana Ugarta and the tenderly fuzzy Emma Suarez, the author said goodbye to his early self. A woman with an acutely fashionable hairstyle for her time, brightly bleached hair, a teacher in a short skirt, surrendering herself on a train to a random, married stranger, with careful courage falling in love with her students, leaving behind her Ithaca, like Odysseus, it seems, there is something shocking ahead, defiant, at the limit of passions, must be a corporate circular responsibility of sinners who judge and do not dare to judge each other, for they are guilty and unhappy no less than their antagonists.
Something similar will happen, but softer, more chamberly, calmer, more traditional than usual. Ordinary. You can’t say it’s more vital, because life is sometimes cooler than any scenario. The familiar mother-daughter theme will double, echo. Sick, flabby, doubly related to the acute pity caused, the heroine of Susi Sanchez suddenly turns into a mummified bitch, a parody of the former herself; and then suddenly the apparent longing of the heroine's father for simple and unpretentious happiness will become clear. Rossi de Palma, unable to hide the volcanic temperament under the modest clothes and habits of the maid, will appear as a rock judge, staring intently and all-seeing. The nymph of Calypso from the mysterious island that promises eternal youth, and indeed it strangely returns in its hot erotic bronze statuettes covered in the color of terracotta, will appear a woman with the face of the heroines of the Gypsy romance Garcia Lorca. A secret and forbidden relationship will seem from around the corner of a tender and cheerful girl friendship that remains in the memory. There will be pain and jealousy, silence and betrayal, escape and unforgiveness, passion mixed with pain. But passion, like underground keys, is hot, then cold. Passion, like the calm surface of the sea, which at the fateful moment will turn into a mortal abyss. In this simple world, there is no right to error – the first one blows up the world, leaving no stone unturned. A world electrified by sin and not spared the consequences of the most innocent, those who did not want to commit a crime. A world where peace is possible.
Yes, this world of the film, where sin is not directly spoken about, but it is said about retribution, is secretly religious, as any passionate person is religious in view of close old age and death. Heroes who were separated by all their might, who were separated by love and hatred, strive for each other as before a catastrophe, and find each other to at least want to forgive. The epistolary thread passing through the canvas of the tape is, in fact, a confession necessary not only for recognition and reconciliation, but also for purification and self-knowledge. If, for example, there is a God in Bergman’s world, but He is incomprehensible and unattainable, watching from afar, without helping or preventing people from painfully searching for each other and explaining themselves, then in the world of Almodovar, the world of sinners, despite the legend that man is defenseless before fate, God is always there, and a tear of pity flows down His wrinkled cheek. Therefore, hope is always somewhere, hidden, transparent layer in the picture, haze, light, caught by the glass of the car on the road to meet.
A mediocre movie. In fact, I came across extremely skeptical reviews about him and the case when I was in solidarity. Movies are boring, tortured. The story of the secondary Alice Monroe (a gift that the Nobel laureate) that thematically that stylistically closer to the Scandinavian gloom of Bergman. Almodovar in all cases filmed carnal, physical, sometimes kitschy. In 'Juliet' from the style of Almodóvar remained only a number of colors in clothes and scenery. It’s always been too much, but here you go.
Frozen Juliet and near does not stand in content with Marisa Paredes in ' The Flower of My Mystery' Her tragedies are very restrained, the reasons for kicking her daughter (with questioning third parties, etc.) are also not very obvious.
It seems that the director shot this film precisely for contrast, as a fundamentally different palette than used in the airplane cabbage. In terms of quality (with all the different directions), both films seemed mediocre to me. With such material and actors, there is nowhere to turn around. Let's see what happens next.
Pedro Almodovor, I remember his simple but lifelike films. This film was no exception, I am sure many will not be disappointed with what they saw.
Juliet, like many heroines about whom Pedro Almadovar loves to shoot, is a strong-willed, but at the same time romantic woman who wanted a peaceful and happy life, especially when there is a loved one nearby. Juliette is empathetic, sympathetic to the life circumstances she has to face, because the relationships of people, especially close ones, are complex and multifaceted. In the film, the past and the present are combined, and thereby justifying, or may give an opportunity for each viewer to form his opinion about the actions of the characters of the film.
Definitely not passable and ' easy' film for fans to abstract from reality. Aftertaste is provided, which is neither good nor bad, but simply characteristic of this director.
It's been a long time since we've had this wonderful female soul detective! Which cuts in first including the movie, of course the colors! Of course, this is Spain, saturated, on the contrast, I think who has previously watched the films of this director, he will understand. If someone encountered it for the first time, then of course it is possible, of the type ' not mine ' Watched all the movies with his hand, and 'Juliet' just a miracle. From the first minute I realized that this is what is missing in our time, among all American production. The film completely allows you to immerse yourself in the history of the heroine of the same name, I will not write about the plot, there is a specific brief summary in the description of the film, I just want to write what those who still think to watch or not? Watch, without a doubt, the film conveys everything as the director wanted, starting with the plot, of course, the actors, they are all here as a selection, and ending with beautiful music!
I especially want to write that the interweaving of the plot of youth and maturity of the main character is very interesting! Once again, we are aware of the complexities of women’s lives. . .
I recommend watching, from beginning to end, and I hope that everyone will appreciate this film.
9.5 out of 10
As I read in several reviews of major print publications: Almodovar once made a film ' All about my mother' and now made a picture ' All about my daughter'. And they're right. This is an infinitely sensual parallel.
A bit about 'My daughter':
Juliet is the mother.
Antia is a daughter.
Juliet's life is getting better after a long depression and loneliness. She is ready to escape from the hated Madrid anywhere. Anywhere, Lisbon, where her friend lives. Everything goes well: she packs her bags, happily meets her man every evening. Until one day he encounters a childhood friend of his daughter on the street.
A friend casually mentions that she met Antia in one of the resort towns of Italy.
It would seem that the usual windy bunch of old acquaintances, which the question 'What is new?' will lead to a dead end.
But after this meeting, Juliet changes her decision to move, moves out of her new apartment and moves into the room in which she used to live with her daughter.
It is from this moment that the problem of the picture pops up - the relationship between mother and daughter (which as such are not). The director immerses the viewer in memories. . .
About the youth of Juliet, about her acquaintance with her future husband and father Antia - Juan, about family life, about the childhood of her daughter, about the ridiculous death of her husband. Most of the picture consists of memories tightly associated with loss, as well as with each year more and more increasing feelings of guilt.
Last memory:
At the age of 18, Antiya leaves for several months in a religious refuge (synonym - sect), from which he does not return. The mentor informs Juliet that the daughter left and asked not to disclose her real whereabouts.
A mother's emotions, I think, will understand everything, even if you're not a mother. First she looks for her daughter, then humbly waits to return home. Celebrates her child's birthday with a cake with candles (and every year throws an intact cake in the trash can), receives postcards from Antia without a word. Juliet does not understand what she is guilty of, what could have happened to Antia, what the mother could have missed in the seemingly happy life of her child. After the death of her father, almost Antia took care of her mother, and not vice versa.
During the period of her daring and selfless waiting, Juliet learns many secrets and reasons why Antija broke off contact with her (thanks for tips to her husband’s mistress and daughter’s childhood friend). Waiting becomes a manic addiction. Understand and accept, release and return.
Only we, and no one else, make the choice.
For the continuation of the story, run rather to the cinema: ) but even after watching the film, you can think of the end of the story only in your imagination. And this is a beautiful Almodovar.
A picture with a taste of cinnamon despair and mint hope.
One of the strongest emotional lines is Juliet’s relationship with her mother, Juliet’s childhood devotion, and the search for her real mother in a woman who is lost in illness.
Oda Almodovaru:
I met the world of Almodóvar in 2006 when I happened to see the scarlet cover of a disc depicting the decidedly beautiful Penelope Cruz. It was the cover of the tape 'Return'. Of course, I swallowed all 116 minutes of the movie in an instant. After it 'Tie me', 'All About My Mother', 'Talk to Her', 'Bad Education', 'Open Embrace', 'The Skin I Live In', 'I'm Very Aroused' and 'Wild Stories'Stories'wept as if it were not 10 years but one session.
Almodovar can either be loved or hated. He is the only one who can be saved from the dead.
I believe every word and every emotion of every character in every picture.
Almodovar is the García Márquez of cinema. There are no emotions and shades 'between' If sadness, then surely bright scarlet color with the taste of the salty sea, if joy is splashing maroon, with the sound of ripe bursting pomegranate.
By the way, I could not first determine the line between the text of Almodóvar and the text from one of the stories from the collection '. Munro. I read the book a few years ago (the author is a Nobel laureate!), but did not make the proper impression. However, in tandem with the director, part of the plot line ' turned exactly there'. The caterpillar of understatement Munroe has become a butterfly of understatement of Almodóvar.
In a series of films in the style ' Suicide Squad' and other unreasonably record jumpers, ' Juliet' - flamenco mother with her only lost child.
Take care of your loved ones
Who has not survived the loss of not able to understand
We’ve always been told to respect others around us, but few have explained that respect begins with ourselves. Before looking for anything in another person, we must first understand ourselves, and then everything will fall into place, and thoughts will no longer disturb us.
Juliet, at first glance, is one of many average women living in different countries and all over the world. She devotes time to herself, a loved one, meets with friends and seems to enjoy life. However, very soon the director reveals to us a little more of the personality of Juliet, the viewer begins to delve more and more into such an unknown inner world of the main character, and very quickly we will see a life picture called “Juliet”.
This film is more like a storytelling and self-discovery, allowing you to look at yourself from the outside. In order to understand another person who is at once so distant but very close to her, Juliet needed to remember her story, understand herself and listen to the feelings and feelings she experienced in her life. The story begins with itself, and it will be a very long way to the ultimate goal, through pain and suffering, through joy and joy, through extinction and awakening.
Many people are accustomed to perceive films only with their eyes, looking at the picture presented to us by the director, but Pedro Almodovar showed not only stunningly beautiful shots that are pleasant to the eye, but also feelings that can transfer to the world from reality to the screen. The time of viewing this picture flies completely unnoticed, completely immersing in its atmosphere. Despite all its drama, cinema leaves a very warm and pleasant feeling of lightness, freshness and hope.
I just want to be with her, but she didn't invite me.
- After 13 years, she did not dare, but left the return address.
8 out of 10
There are movies that are beautiful, bright, with a special atmosphere, where each scene is a kind of picture that you want to admire. That’s what the movie “Juliet” is. In addition to raising social themes, such as the relationship between mother-daughter and human selfishness, the film is also attractive for its aesthetics. Whether it’s a simple scene where the main character goes out onto the balcony just to think about life or sits behind manuscripts about her youth, these scenes are very beautiful. The director masterfully plays with color. Bright colors in the heroine’s clothes draw parallels with the vivid life lived, and even the color of wine in a glass for different characters entails a different meaning in the same period of time: red is a hundred, white is pacification. Without going into details, it seems that the end of the film is not without reason “colored” in green, because if you believe psychologists, green is the color of peace of mind and harmony.
"Juliet" is a film for a thinker. As the plot develops, more and more new ideas come to mind, which the director so skillfully veiled in the frame. This is certainly a film with an aftertaste, an encyclopedia of life, the meaning of which can only be understood by reading to the end. In the center of events, the woman Juliet, whose life did not go according to the scenario she originally planned. At one point in her life, Juliet loses her daughter, who just runs away from her. What forced the girl to take such a step and what the consequences are, the film tells us. Well, at the end of the viewing, the viewer understands, because such a situation, without embellishment, could exist in reality and perhaps it is just someone's confession.
In the end, "Juliet" - a wonderful work of the most talented director Pedro Almodóvar. Anyone who has seen one of his films will not even doubt this statement. The film is able to touch the living, inspire new actions (even such as quitting a boring job and immediately fly to Madrid), steal the evening, and perhaps in something and look at yourself from the outside.
8 out of 10
Handwritten lines about the secrets of the lived years.
Pedro Almodovar is an artist who often speaks in his films about the inner structure of a person, about his true desires and secrets. And all this revolves around the beautiful, or rather beautiful half of humanity – around women, which are the main secret of the author’s works. The sharpness of the statements and some provocativeness are also his favorite, but in recent years, the meter began to soften its language, delighting the viewer with more even narrative works, such as kind of movie novels.
The new film is not a large-scale work, although at first it claims to be an epic drama of intricacies of fate. Just as great writers write small stories between their epochal novels, so great film artists sometimes make short sketches. In this case, the Artist presented the viewer with such a small-scale film story. But not only in this picture is a kind of “retreat” for Almodovar. In this tape, the author somewhat departs from the usual figurative and thematic form.
Juliet is a rather melodramatic film, and almost for the first time for Almodóvar without any provocations, but still without excessively romanticized moods. The integrity of the lines of Almodóvar’s ideological handwriting is certainly preserved, especially since in the center of the film itself there is again a woman who is trying to understand what has already been done, namely, in her past, which will indicate the answers in the search for her new meaning of life. She lost a child, literally her daughter, who had grown up. How and why there was such a separation-loss viewer will learn throughout the tape. To the viewer familiar with Almodovar, many of his motives will be recognizable, but some in the picture for this author, still a novelty.
As already mentioned, the picture has a fairly smooth, soft and somewhat melodic tone, without any protest and sharp moods. The emphasis here is shifted towards psychologicality, rather than towards the sharpness and “piquancy” of the problems expressed. In addition, in this film, the author used new colors and artistic forms that create a different character in the figurative perception. For example, these are light moods “from Hitchcock” – the expectation of something coming, dangerous and alarming, which are quite organically woven into the figurative form of the tape, giving a light tone of “thriller” to some scenes, but of course without any obvious accents in this direction. Coupled with the cozy atmosphere of local apartments, houses with sea views, train interiors, Spanish landscapes, the picture paints its warm energy something similar to the classics of narrative world cinema. Although somewhat seasoned at times with documentary and glass, overly transparent purity of the frame. Also, very characteristically emphasizes the tone of the tape and magnificent musical design.
In the picture, and as always with Almodóvar, there is a wonderful work with color solutions. And of course, branded "red details" in the frame - T-shirts, cars, pens, interior elements, which further emphasizes the atmosphere of a certain "coming danger." There are metaphorical figurative finds and exquisite subtlety in the direction of some scenes. For example, the initial frames of the tape are fascinating and make you admire the true skill of the artist. Acting works are very good and attractive aesthetic images. But still there is a slight artificiality in the characters, some excessive transparency.
As already noted, the film came out somewhat simple and chamber. There are not very many voluminous plans and circumstances, events follow each other without special logical pauses, as if the characters act as if according to a pre-planned scheme - everything is clear, fast and a little unnatural. And in general, the logic of some scenes raises questions, but without serious claims. It is still interesting to observe history, despite the fact that there is more intrigue than the depth and twisting of the story itself. In this sense, the script of the picture is quite simple and has certain drawbacks, including some logical gaps, a slight clumsiness of the narrative, and strange actions of the characters.
In general, the picture is similar to his own film “Open Embrace”, only of course, with a much smaller scale. And it seems that such a small scale and streamlined nature of the tape are designed to focus our attention on the inner problems of the characters, and even on some philosophical thought of the artist, about the causes and consequences in the perspective of fateful decisions of our lives. And what is the face of his guilt and his redemption? The picture makes you think a little about it. And the director is like asking himself some important questions. But not as sharp and clear as I wanted. The author, as if opening the door to his secret, decides to close it, so much without showing. Hiding the key somewhere in your heart. It's like it's something very personal and he doesn't want to reveal everything to us. In this sense, the picture, as it were, somewhat "does not squeeze" its idea - being either not completely mysterious and not sufficiently philosophizing, or tells its story too quickly and crumpledly with a very open ending.
Almodovar, like the main character of the film, writes her own personal, small story here. In a small cozy room under the light of a dim lamp, writing lines by hand without unnecessary sharpness, he simply remembers something from his life, bequeathing to the world another picture - which will always keep the true memory of his feelings and lived years. By not revealing the secrets of all the lines to us, he leaves the line between our personal stories. So that through the years, in a moment of redemption by time, someone would meet their new dawns at the foot of the mountains they once wanted to return to. Finally forgiving those who often wander in the shadows of their fate, having drunk a fully invented cup of guilt about their past.
Nomination 'Julietta' Pedro Almodóvar on the Golden Palm in Cannes can hardly be considered as a tribute to the resting master. Almodovar is an acting director, seeking and not losing his special charm in 'Juliet'. The film can be safely attributed to those samples of author’s cinema, where each frame is built in that unique coloristic manner, where it is clear who shot it all. Almodovar remained in 'Juliet' it was the director Pedro Almodovar, whose films were loved by millions. And herself ' Juliet' built as cleared of the expected southern passions detective melodrama, where the victim and the investigator-narrator fit in the same body of the main character.
I think that Pedro Almodovar is a few common stereotypes that immediately put the great Spaniard on a certain shelf. Singer of women's destinies, filigree eccentric, organizer of labyrinths of human passions. In 'Juliet' there is no eccentricity at all, but two other branded components are available. The idea of the recipe this time were several stories by Alice Munro, Almodovar moved the scene from Canada to Spain, but did not add the signature temperament to the action of the picture. There is a definite plus - the story 'Julietta' looks more like a film adaptation of a never put a little old-fashioned theatrical play than a film based on the original script.
The story of Juliet herself (beautiful in every way - gaining momentum Adrian Ugarte and Emma Suarez) in the film is presented as the story of a woman who becomes fatal to the men around her, without even wanting to. Almodóvar’s painting shows that one night on a train can bring both love and guilt, and it will take years to figure it out. The heroine performed by Ugarte-Suarez gravitates to conscious loneliness. Discussion of Odysseus and his relationship with the nymph Calypso in a school lesson in 'Juliet' becomes the tuning fork for the entire film. Does Juliet really love anyone, is she capable of it from the call of her heart, rather than in obedience to social instincts? The director consistently highlights these questions and gives answers to them.
In general ' Juliet' can be represented as one of the anthems of tolerance. The husband walks on the side - so not with someone, with his long-time friend, talented sculptor of disproportionate genitalia Ava (Inma Cuesta), with whom Juliet sweetly meets and talks about the high. Juliet's father with a living, but seriously ill wife, starts an affair with a young assistant - it is also necessary to understand, not an old man and is still able to shake his old days. At the funeral of Ava, Juliet meets Lorenzo (Dario Grandinetti) - it is necessary to take for granted what a high-minded, compliant and talented man inherited from the deceased. What do I mean? According to Almodóvar in 'Juliet' - not all that is white that seems so, and not all that is black. Life is based on halftones, experience and forgiveness, not on the mantras of popular psychologists.
Separately, I will focus on men in 'Juliet'. Almodovar deliberately emasculates male images. Well, which of the glamorous Daniel Grao is a village fisherman, so, an unrestrained lustful male, and Lorenzo as a collective image of a delicate introverted writer, ready for understanding, worship and any whims, Juliet's father is a hymn to physiology, simple as truth, takes that closer. Not men, but hangers for decoration. For Juliet, they are all their few stars with low albedo on her life path.
In 'Juliet' Almodovar through a confusing plot leads to one simple thought. You can’t live for yourself all the time. You need to listen, talk and be heard. Children, loved men, casual fellow travelers. It's very simple. But it can save you from death, from a sect, and from someone you have not loved for many years. Juliet's trouble is that she's late, gets everything late. Apart from her loneliness, she has no one else to count on. To replay life, turn memories, and chase the ghost of your own daughter. We are not hopeless, we have chances and time sometimes does not cure.
8 out of 10
Juliet is a new film by Pedro Almadovar, made according to the canons of his own style of hot, emotional melodrama with many conscious sentimental cliches, most of which work perfectly and almost imperceptibly. Pictures such as “All About My Mother”, “Living Flesh”, “Talk to Her” are made in a similar spirit, but the effect of self-citation when watching “Juliet” almost does not occur. The director creates an envelope effect, sealing one narrative into the shell of another, gradually unravelling the tense knot of the narrative almost in the form of a thriller.
As always, in the best films of Almadovar, passion and death are intertwined almost to the point of indistinguishability, creating easily palpable drive and thanatographic rhymes (so many tragic deaths are rare when you meet in his paintings), the director captivates the viewer with his skill of the narrator, offering him a story about the affinity of misunderstanding and guilt. What distinguishes Almadovar from artisans who create melodramatic series? First of all, it is easily recognizable by the viewer archetypal subtext of history, in this case – it is the myth of the wanderings of Odysseus, which alternately act herself Juliet and her daughter Antiya (an allusion to the ancient Greek hero Antheus, who fed his forces from the earth).
Literature teacher, Juliet herself by the will of rock becomes the hero of an almost novel narrative with a large number of deaths, random encounters, it is difficult to write about this story not to spoiler the intrigue, but one thing can be said, many characters and events are symmetrical to each other: Antiya and Beatrice, the death of two Juans, the illness of Juliet’s mother and Juan’s wife, the meeting of Juan and Juliet on a tragic background, the images of Ava and the friend of Father Juliet, the demonic traditionalist image of Mariam. All this is surprisingly rhymed and baroquely reflected in one another, thanks to which Almadovar again shows himself as an artist of the postmodern neo-Baroque era.
As always, the director demonstrates his strong design abilities, painting the walls in red light (against the background of such a quarrel Juliet and Lorenzo), informing Antija about the death of his father against the background of a black painting, planting a young Juliet in a red chair in blue, Almadovar wants to show that the colors of life and feelings are bright and passionate, not knowing halftones, however, he almost does not use elements of kitsch aesthetics in the narrative of the film, unlike his provocative, vulgar, helpless ones, which are quite oppressive with such a “Luber” and “I finishing us”.
Almadovar is a postmodernist working with kitsch and camp, but the genre space of his paintings is quite poor and fits somewhere between melodrama and comedy, nevertheless, the elements of the thriller, the detective, paint him in general virtuoso, but substantively poor films, secondary to the tragic aesthetics of Bergman and Cassavetes, whom he loves and constantly quotes, in cheerful and vital colors. Almadovar is a life lover and optimist, even the very dramatic vicissitudes of his paintings do not carry the existential depth of the original source (correlate “Autumn Sonata” and “High Heels”).
High art can only be tragic, it shows life conflicts in all their contradictions, makes images multifaceted and multicolored, it, unlike kitsch-loving postmodernism, knows and appreciates semitones. For this reason, even Almadovar’s fascinating, masterfully constructed “tragic” melodramas seem to be stylistic experiments in storytelling, formally flawless, but empty works. Compared to the same Bergman.
“Juliet” is certainly one of the best paintings of Almadovar, devoid of the bad taste and vileness of his comedies, but it loses not only more masterful in technical terms “Living Flesh” and “Talk to Her” (in “Juliet”, unlike them, still sometimes slows down the pace of the story, although in comparison with other opuses of modern directors-losers, this is almost an example of a fascinating narrative), but the higher Bergman cinematic tragedy.
If we talk about the super-task, then Almadovar, like Frears in Philomen, tries to expose conservative morality with the traditional distribution of gender roles, a sense of guilt for sins committed and a strong pressure on the individual, but unlike his British counterpart, does it in a tangential, without anti-clerical and anti-class pathos, so we can say that the main character and the very meaning of Juliet becomes the storytelling itself, the literary intrigue.
In addition, using two different actresses for the same role, Almadovar makes an homage to Buñuel’s “This Obscure Object of Desire,” adding a surreal fleur to the tape. Almadovar is certainly not a student of the great Spaniard, a master of both comedies and high tragedies (remember Viridian), too many style differences, but very talented, albeit predictable (Bunuel was unpredictable), both in substantive and formal terms, the director.
I was lucky enough to watch this film on the last day of my stay in Madrid, and the sad sediment after watching mixed with the sadness of leaving. But for some reason, this only strengthened the impressions of this thin and piercing tape, which is simply obliged to enter the golden fund of cinema. But everything in order.
Over the past six years, the main director of modern Spain shot three radically different in style of film. After Hitchcock’s reading of the myth of Pygmalion in The Skin I Live In and the places of squabbling, poisonously satirical, but at the same time kind and touching Passengers in Love, he made perhaps the loneliest film of his career – “Hulieta”, an adaptation of three novels by Alice Munro from the collection “The Fugitive” (Nobel Prize for Literature-2013). Transferring the trilogy of stories of “Canadian Chekhov” to Spanish soil, and also working with such an atypical style for yourself is a bold task, and the director coped with it perfectly. It is worth noting that in “Hullet” the accents are placed differently than in the literary primary source, it is difficult to call the film adaptation: the Spanish master eventually turned out to be a completely independent work. But at the same time, the critics are right, who called this film the peak of deconstruction by the director of his style and the most “non-Almodovar” of his film, as well as the most tragic and restrained in his career.
Here Almodovar almost abandoned everything that he loved so much in his previous films and came to a completely new stylistics - an intellectual psychological drama, in which the analysis of the inner world of the characters is adjacent to the developed system of leitmotifs and philosophical undertones, and the visual picture is aestheticized like never before (the game with the color scheme here is paid no less attention than, say, in the canvas of some classical artist). However, as before, in his twentieth feature film, the director mixes various cinematic genres. But this time the psychological drama, the melodrama thriller and go hand in hand... with the ancient tragedy, where the ball rules Rock. This ancient tragedy, it turns out, can be read in the fate of the modern inhabitant of Madrid - one of the thousands. Throughout her life, a sense of guilt goes hand in hand with her, destroying relations with loved ones, taking everything and everyone away.
The psychological component of the film, like, simple, repeats the well-known, but necessary truths - that the lack of emotional contact, empathy, inability to express their feelings, talk about what is tormenting, unwillingness or again inability to feel the pain of another leads to irreparable.
However, this is only the first level of the story. In the future, the film acquires other, more complex and deep echoes. Composition plays an important role in this. Twice the fate of the characters will be reflected in each other, as if in a mirror, and the various characters will seem almost doubles of each other. Follow the parallels between Julieta and Juan, her father and her mother’s nurse, and the fates of Julieta’s husband and grandson, all bearing the same name. This fateful fixation of life, which repeats the previous plots again and again becomes as if the background of the picture.
There are many antique quotes in the film. And when the heroine, a literature teacher, tells her students about the Odyssey and the understanding of the sea as a road, as a thirst for a new life, she tells about herself - a girl who will break out of the world of books into a world so desirable and inaccessible to her before. Then the story of Odysseus-Calypso will cast a shadow over her relationship with Juan. The sea generally has a huge place in the system of images of the picture. It turns into a symbol or an independent character, it turns out to be the personification of an ancient blind force that exists side by side with man and speaks of the irrationality of the elements of the world.
Very important for understanding the subtexts of this story is the myth that the heroine tells her friend. That the gods had no gifts left for men, with which they endowed other creatures, and men came out the most orphaned of their creations, defenseless and alone amid the storms and storms of the blind seas. So do heroes. Their fate is an illustration of this nakedness of man in the wild.
This is the existential abyss that suddenly reaches the story of a woman whose daughter cut her out of life. Never before has Almodovar reached such heights. And that, of course, is his huge victory.
Watching “Hulieta” is recommended for all fans of good intellectual cinema. This is a movie that needs to be felt and thought through. And also to touch beauty. Which appears in the running among the snow-capped fields of the deer, and in the landscapes of Spain, and in the dusk of the streets of Madrid, and in the outlines of the naked bodies of heroes, and a similar picture of reality, crucified between red and blue tones.
The famous director Pedro Almodóvar has 20 films, and all of them have long become classics. 20 movies - and all great! At the same time, they are as different as the paintings of one artist can be. Do we not confuse Aivazovsky with anyone else? So Almodovar is one, and he is unique. If you’ve seen at least three of the Spanish guru’s 20 films, if you take a look at any episode of his films, you’ll know his style. And here, like all great artists, the cockel is still the same!
Almodóvar’s jubilee picture “Julietta” is a great result of this 30-year creative path of the great director, and at the same time – a bright flashing lighthouse of something new that Almodóvar has not yet tried. Judge for yourself - the plot plot is that the mother disappears without a trace daughter, and now she, desperate to find her, suddenly meets a "man from the past", who encourages her to plunge into his, where it becomes interesting to understand already the viewer. At the same time, the cold on the back, as in the best thrillers, does not disappear for a minute.
This is not just an Almador drama, but the first thriller directed by Almodovar. Like any great master, the Spanish don has a talent for discovering beautiful actresses. Once he gave us Penelope Cruz - not just as a beauty for magazine covers and star marriages, but as an actress. In Juliette, we see another discovery by Almodóvar, Adriana Ugarte. Literally everyone will be fascinated with her - from critics to glossy billed editors, the director gave her not only to show her beauty, but also to breathe real acting. The scenes and dialogues with her are the gems that make Juliet a high-end movie. And this film, in turn, Almodóvar opens from a completely new side.
'Juliet' this work excludes extragenre inclusions - so the precious metal is separated from excess impurities. This feature was emphasized by the director himself, another unique feature is the attraction to maximum expressiveness. But at the same time, the film is focused not only on aestheticism, but, first of all, on psychologicalism, which explains the choice of genre - drama, which is based on a deep psychological conflict between mother and daughter. Aesthetics here serves as a frame for a diamond - the firm determination of the heroine - capable of cutting the strongest glass of cold remoteness, erected to protect the inner peace.
The storyline of the film is the memories of the heroine, gathered together by analogy with a torn and re-glued photo. They become the starting point where the present ends and the journey into the past begins. It is a agonizing journey back that easily opens seemingly lingering wounds, causing suffering, but this confession is necessary for the heroine to finally be honest - and above all with herself. And so before the audience is gradually reconstructed the story of a woman who lost her daughter.
The story, it seems, is not so original - a lie destroys everything, and silence and inability to express their feelings can lead to tragedy, but its presentation deprives the possibility of this thought. The story begins with an uncertain movement of the handle on a snow-white sheet and gradually gives the image of the heroine depth and clarity, adding details. The letter that Juliet writes to her daughters is an illumination of the path that led to this point of existence in which life split in two. The heroine as a woman who uncompromisingly erased her daughter from life is pushed aside by another side of her personality - a loving and longing mother who spent in a soul-destroying separation from her child for many years. In fact, the narrative is a discretely presented autobiography, consisting of a series of flashbacks, with an emphasis on its key points and with an appropriately modest amount of reflection. This provides the key to understanding the character of the heroine and her seemingly illogical actions. The result is a re-creation of a sad picture of family relations, as if liberated from the outer layer of paint, which is a completely different image on top of the true. At the same time, the director does not immediately reveal the true essence of the conflict, putting first only before the fact its consequences and then distracting alternately to contrasting events from the life of the heroine, not directly related to it. So, as if on a winding path with ups and downs, he guides the viewer through the inner world of Juliet, quietly twisting a spring of tension, which at one moment bursts, touching the viewer with its sharp end.
The conflict in the film is based on the eternal problem of intergenerational relations, which rests on one of its facets - misunderstanding. Empathy is limited by one’s own experience, and only experiencing the same traumatic situation makes one understand another. And only time and chance are free to solve such a dilemma, according to whose irony the pain of tragedy divides people, but it also becomes the cause of their rapprochement - the first insecure steps towards each other after years of oblivion. And the possible catharsis remains beyond the frame of the director, who stopped at the open finale, giving the heroine a farewell road illuminated by hope.
A feature of the film is that its art world could be called subject-sterile, if not raging brightness of the color palette. Pure drama here implies the presence of pure color, like the works of Renaissance artists. The color here wins a convincing victory in the struggle for a way to reflect the state of the heroine, which contrasts with the relative asceticism of the frame, and thanks to this it makes a profitable composition. Almodovar proves himself not only an artist of the human soul, but also an amazingly beautiful frame. At the same time, it is like Spain itself with its picturesqueness suggests a range of red, blue and gold. The undisputed leader among them is the first, penetrating from frame to frame an integral element, not just decorative, but in harmony with the emotional state of the heroine.
'Juliet' in expressiveness is not inferior to the almost eponymous tape Fellini, who also devoted this work to family problems, although only partially. It presents an identical situation in which the spiritual world of an old woman, strong and beautiful, is represented in all her disarming nakedness. The world of Juliet Almodóvar is an expression, suppressed and broken through the isolation of the heroine in the frame by the intensity of color, this loneliness, which became the price of error and destroyed life, and also the strength of the spirit, which allows a person to sculpt and rule himself, like a clay statuette, which became one of the symbols of the film.
Pedro Almodovar is undoubtedly a living classic of cinema, a legendary personality whose cult works are studied by students on the course History of Cinema. Therefore, to the new films of the Master such increased attention, which, suppose, does not even dream Kusturica. At the same time, the main feature of the Spaniard is the ability to “froze in amber” – from film to film, he does not progress in any direction. But the fact that from film to film, if not masterpieces, then in the future cult things, became a regularity.
So the new creation of Almodóvar – “Juliet” did not become a sensation in Cannes and is unlikely to be anywhere else, but the audience will definitely love this new chick from the classic’s nest. And every fan will know exactly why. For the almadovary measured, on the verge of boredom, the narrative, for the beautiful actors in the frame, for the beautiful picture, for the beautiful dialogues, for the misunderstanding at the beginning of the tape - why do I show this to a deep thoughtfulness about life - after the credits. In the end, for the rain and the sea behind a huge panoramic window, to which the crying main character leans against her forehead. And there will be many such films, film canvases in the film.
The eye rejoices, the soul freezes. And, of course, as always with the Master, all cinema and all life revolves around a woman. As once shone at Almodovar Penelope Cruz, so now a young actress Adriana Ugarte, unprecedentedly beautiful and unprecedentedly unhappy, has caught fire. This combination is also the signature style of the Spanish genius. In Ugarta, you want to swim, follow her every move, catch every word – this is one of the fetishes of “Julietta”. Like a magnet, it attracts the audience’s attention and does not let go until the end of the session.
If you compare Almodóvar with Almodóvar himself, then Juliet, of course, resembles Return and the Oscar-winning All About My Mother. There is also added the mystery and cold plaque of the thriller, which translates this melodrama into the rank of the highest division of film masterpieces. Into the gold pool, definitely. This is the 20th film of the Master, I want to see the anniversary 50th, Almodovar will never get bored.
Pedro Almodovar surprisingly harmoniously managed to accommodate in 99 minutes of timing the whole fate of the main character. And fate is far from easy. Juliet is the main character of the picture, lived a difficult, sad life full of both amazing and tragic events.
The main line of the story is relationships. First with her husband Juan and then with her daughter Antia. The tragedy, after which the misunderstanding of Juliet and Antia began, served as the beginning of their separation from each other and as a result, the daughter completely left her father’s home. Unexpectedly and without warning. What happened to her and most importantly why she decided to break all ties with the closest person will be explained near the end of the film. And the reason for that is serious. You can understand both the daughter and Juliet herself. On whose side is the truth, everyone decides for himself.
Istria pulls in the whole, starting with the first frames. The set with sharp intrigue, you fold it like a puzzle to see the finished picture at the end. The viewing is fascinating. The images of the present and the past alternate, and the mother’s motives become fully understood. Cinema is multifaceted. Especially successful were the dialogues, more precisely the monologues that Juliet leads with herself in the moments of writing letters to Antia.
The picture is sustained in calm tones and beautiful shots. Melodic music adds atmosphere to everything that happens. The cast plays flawlessly, emotions are transmitted correctly, the heroes certainly believe.
"Juliet" is a movie designed for careful viewing. See, feel and penetrate.