Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Adraina Ugarte, Emma Suárez, Michelle Jenner, Daniel Grao, Rossy de Palma, Inma Cuesta, Dario Grandinetti, Nathalie Poza, Pilar Castro, Susi Sánchez, Augustin Almodóvar, Blanca Parés, Mariam Bachir, Tomás del Estal, Joaquín Notario, Ramón Aguirre.

We may make the decisions that guide us, or at least we may think we do, but ultimately at the end fate may have other ideas and no matter how much try, we cannot be in control of what happens to us or those we hold close.

It is a well worn scenario and trope in films, however in Pedro Almdóvar’s touching Julieta, the cinema goer is left experiencing a slice of someone else’s life in which will catch them unawares, will have them pondering more than the effect we have on each other’s lives and ultimately the feeling of hope and despair will join forces to deliver one of the surprise hits of the year.

Julieta is a tremendous piece of foreign language art, it captivates from the initial opening and whilst it never exceeds the cinematic speed limit, it endears itself with the odd detour into the Spanish psyche of loneliness and regret in such a way that you cannot but feel for the main character, portrayed by both the sensational Adraina Ugarte and Emma Suárez, you feel her pain and her depression as she battles to understand why her daughter left her. It is a colossus of a role and one in which the two women carry off with gentleness, brutal anger and painstaking beauty.

Julieta is an offering to those who refuse blindly to get emotionally attached to foreign language films, those who believe that nothing but their own mother tongue can suitably express the sentiment and who fail to grasp that no matter the idiom, we all feel pain; it is an offering worth holding onto, of opening yourself and accepting that words, no matter how they are delivered, are enough to reconcile two people when silence has been their communication.

With tremendous support from Michelle Jenner, Daniel Grao and Dario Grandinetti, the film about one woman’s absolute love and undiagnosed hate for her daughter and the pain of separation is a touching and absorbing spectacle that pulls no punches, a triumph of Spanish film, Julieta is a modern work of art.

Ian D. Hall